#Living in its iron grip. Safe from everything except it itself

[spideymarvelws]

can you do some technoblade x teen platonic reader headcanons about techno sorta being the reader’s mentor and being one of the only people on the smp who could actually defeat technoblade in a sword fight?

behold... another main character

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Warnings : Violence, Death, Some cursing

Word Count : 4.0k

The Blade and The Survivor (1/?)

Technoblade x GN!Platonic!Teen!Reader

You’ve only ever heard the story’s of the famous blood god growing up

Your brother was the first to introduce you to the legend, the legend of a man who never died

Who’s fought battles that no person could ever dream of and walked out victorious every time

The well known anarchist who’s taken down government after government

You were hooked from the very beginning and after every tail he would tell, you would beg your brother to teach you how to fight like him

While your brother wasn’t the best, he knew his way around basic weapons from your grandfather and agreed 

He would bring you out to a nearby plains biome anytime you were free and teach you all he knew

And while it wasn't much, you were grateful for every piece of information and put your all into everything he taught you

He even reenacting some fights from the stories to make it interesting for you

You would always play along, acting as the infamous blade and running around with your brother

Sometimes you would shout “blood for the blood god” while killing cows or chickens

But you refused to kill pigs.

In fact you got a pet one and named it Bladey

For your birthday your brother got you a saddle and you made a carrot on a stick using the crops he stole from the farm so you could ride it across the village

He also gifted you a wooden sword and axe while he wielded stone

for safety of course, he wasn't about to give a child stone tools

Along with a shield that had the banner of your village

But out of every weapon, you were the best with a bow

You had a natural talent for it, every arrow you ever shot always hit its target

Your brother would always ruffle your hair and compare your aim to that of the blade’s, making you beam even brighter

“Who knew we have an archer on our hands, the blade could never compare,”

But all of this was done in secret

The village you lived in was safe, small and homey

Everyone knew one another, so the possibly of someone committing crimes or turning against someone was unlikely

The villagers were peaceful with one another

And with the iron golems patrolling every corner 

you loved to give them poppies from your mother’s garden as a thank you

There was no need to learn to fight when you lived in a place that never needed it

The village ran on balance, equality amongst each person so that everyone could be amongst one another in peace

Plus, at the time you were the youngest in the village, considered a baby by everyone

And while you had the kindness and curiosity to match it, there was always something missing

Training was the only thing that fulfilled it

Your brother thought that your practises would disrupt that balance so he never told anyone about your activities

And that stayed true until your last night in the village 

You, your brother and bladey were making your way back to the village after a long day of training when you noticed thick, black smoke rising from where it stood

You both started walking carefully to the area, you walking behind your brother with the pig in your arms for comfort

In the distance, you noted the shadow of pillagers and iron ore scattered across the grounds

You went to scream as you got close and run to your house, but your brother slapped his hand over your mouth and pulled you with him behind a nearby tree

But one of the pillagers heard the noise of leaves rustling and began to approach the both of you.

Your brother was quick to take out his sword, pushing you behind him 

“Listen to me Y/n, I want you to run okay? Run and never stop until you know you’re safe okay?”

You shook your head, “What about you? What about our parents?”

He smiled sadly, shakily ruffling your hair, “I’ll be right behind you... Now go!”

The sound of swords clashing and the screams of your brother were the last things you heard  as you ran, tears falling from your face 

Bladey squealed in your arms, wiggling and turning to get out of them, sensing the danger but you kept your grip tight, following your brother’s orders and running as far as pos sible

Needless to say he didn’t follow, neither did the rest of the village that was left in ashes and ruins after the attack

You couldn't find the heart to turn back, to fight along side your brother

You fled like a coward. Guilt, pain and hatred riding on your back 

But you didn't give up hope, plotting revenge against the mobs who destroyed your home

Who killed your family

You walked for days, stopping at villages, trading with them and improving your supplies

And getting a lot of carrots

Your wooden swords turned into iron, along with the rest of your tools

Your leather helmet turned into a full set of iron armor 

But you kept your old shield, repairing it every time it lost durability

You even crafted a crossbow that you learned was the main weapon pillagers used

You dreamed of pointing it at there neck, watching the sharp arrowhead puncture their skin and bleed out on the floor

You tended to sleep through the day and fight threw the night, taking out your anger on the mobs that spawned around the wood houses you made to keep yourself warm and isolated

Times when you weren't fighting and training, you spent in the library of any village you found, learning about anything you could

It was there you learnt about the rare ore diamonds, hidden deep in caves 

You also learned about enchantments, that made your armor and weapons even stronger

Soon enough you were geared up with full diamond armor and a set of diamond tools 

But it was never enough, you always needed more 

So you went to nether after repairing a ruined portal you came across

And began exploring

Gathered potions

All the materials you could find

Along with netherite

And fighting every mob you happened to pass by except piglins

For such a young age, you were stacked, maxed out to the point of boredom that you couldn't go further

Even Bladey had his own turtle shell, adjusted slightly to fit his head and allow him sight

You often wondered if this was what it was like to feel like technoblade

And throughout your journeys, you kept the stories your brother told you by heart, learning as much as you could about The Blade

You followed in his footsteps, using his successes as even more motivation to continue on your quest

And ready to finally get your revenge

It was easy to take down the pillage post, taking the banner and making your own shield that you kept as a trophy in your inventory as a reminder of what you lost

But it wasn’t enough, the loss of your family laid heavy and your heart

So you started protecting the villages you visited in exchange for lower prices in trades

You believed that was your purpose now, you had nothing else to do but fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves

You wanted to help in ways that you couldn't all those years ago

You would wear a black cloak over your armor, the hood covering your head and a mask concealing your face

You couldn't imagine wearing a skull mask, even if it was for the aesthetic

You looked like death itself

Death with a cute pig side kick

Soon enough, word got around of a teenage warrior roaming the lands labelled ‘The Survivor’, catching the attention of Wilbur and Tommy who had just been exiled from L’manburg

“Why would we need them if we already have techno on our side?”

“Because we need all the allies we could get Tommy, plus we don’t want Shlatt to get to them first.”

You would be passing by Pogtopia on your horse with Bladey tucked into you lap sleeping, following a map to another village that needed help when a tall man stepped in front of your path, making you halt

“Why hello there, Survivor, care for a little chat?” he said ominously, leaning against your horse

You payed no mind to him, hitting his hand of your horse, rolling your eyes and moving around him

You’ve meet people like him on your travels before, people who only needed you for your skills and selfish reasons

At least, that how he came off and you didn’t care to stay and find out if your assumptions were true

“Hey, hey, hey, look, I’m sorry if I came off so forward but- I need your help,”

That made you stop.

“Need help with what exactly?”

He went on to explain his situation about a place called L’Manburg, an evil dictator named Jshlatt and his exile along with someone named TommyInnit

At first you said no.

You were only interest in keeping your own kind safe, protected people who needed it

And from the looks of it, it seemed that the two men put themselves in there position so they should be the one to take themselves out

That and you had more pressing matters to attend to than government

“What do you need? What would you want in return?” he started to beg, walking along side your horse as you started to ride away

“I already have all I need,” you croaked

“Well that seems boring. Don’t you want a bit of adventure in your life Survivor? A little bit of flavour to spice up it up? It must be so boring just fighting the same thing over and over again, why not work for a group? A collective?”

You grew tired of his voice, letting out a deep breath you began to consider his words

As much as you didn’t want to admit, he was right

You had been travelling around the lands, going insane, doing the same thing over and over

And while it helped people, it was growing tiring

Maybe one war wouldn’t be so bad, and perhaps you would learn some new stuff along the way

And the alliance with this so called L’manburg would be good for the long run

“If I agree... would you shut up?” you finally cut off his rambling and stopping your horse

He blinked in surprise, “Wow! If i had known talking would make you cave in, I would've brought up Tommy instead.”

You sighed, “I’ll help you okay? As long as I get free access to L’manburg afterwards along with all the supplies i need,”

“Done, done and done.”

The first day wasn’t as bad as you expected it to be

Wilbur was actually pretty chill, letting you make a new home out of the ravine they stayed in

Niki was also really kind, bringing sweet treats from Manburg every time she visited

It was nice to settle for a while, you couldn't remember the last time you slept under the same roof for more that a day

Your horse, Jewel along with Bladey seemed to settle well along with you

You also met Tubbo and Tommy, a lively duo that overwhelmed you at first but there energy was nice to see in such a grey environment

What you didn’t expect was to meet him

You would be mining a small space in the ravine for yourself and your pets when you heard a monotone voice sound from behind you

“Heh?! Who’s the kid?” 

You spun around, raising your sword to the intruder but froze when you noticed the familiar skull mask, along with pointy piglin ears hidden behind bright pink hair 

He didn’t seem fazed by your weapon, leaning against the stone door frame with his arms crossed

“You’re- you’re him.” you muttered in awe

Before he could respond, Wilbur popped out from behind him, “Oh, yeah. That’s Y/n, Y/n, Techno. Techno, Y/n,” he nudged his side, “They’ll be helping us take back L’manburg,”

Techno only nodded, “Nice.” he tilted his head, “Aren’t you that Survivor dude? That’s pretty pog.”

Cut to you standing frozen in place, jaw dropped to the floor, eyes wide in amazement

“You- you know who I am?” you squeaked, quickly sticking your sword in the ground and leaning against the handle, stumbling slightly

An attempt to seem cool in front of your idol

An attempt that didn't really work out

He let out a hum, “Heard the name from around yeah,” he pointed to your sword, “Might not want to stab your sword in stone, It’s not that affective.”

And with that he left

Leaving you in shock

If only your brother could see you now

After that interaction, you started to follow him around like a lost puppy, watching in awe at every little thing he did

You felt like a kid again, the warmth in your chest that you lost so long ago restored because the person who tied you and your brother together was here

Because you were training and fighting along side your childhood hero

He would act annoyed at first, always shrugging you off or moving to other rooms to avoid you

You were like a parasite 

He could never shake you off

He didn’t want to grow close to anyone, he was here to take down yet another corrupt government not to look after some orphan

That was Phil’s thing.

But after time he grew a liking to you, enjoying your presence while he was farming potatoes or visiting his cow farm

You acted different around him, the hard and emotionless exterior you showed to Tommy and Wilbur completely vanished and left an innocent, happy child

He always wondered why 

People never did that with him

He was a feared name across the lands of the smp, everyone usually kept there distance and became extremely cautious in his presence

But you didn’t seem to get scared, in fact, you were a talker, constantly asking question after question even if he gave no response

It was nice not to be alone after so long even though he would never admit it 

Even the voices started to take a liking to your bubbly and curious personality

Why is she asking the same question

Maybe you should answer her blood god

She seems nice

You really do take after your father

He saw a part of himself in you

Unlike Tommy and Wilbur, you weren’t fighting for government, you were fighting because you had nothing else to do

Because you were bored with your everyday life being, essentially, an assassin 

The thought always made him chuckle

He left like he could trust you over them because your weren't driven under a government

At least that’s what he told himself

He also wanted to see why they valued your alliance so much to give up half there riches to you from L’manburg

“Duel with me.” he said to you one day, out of the blue as you both made your way across a plain biome looking to animals to kill for food

“Heh?” you said under your breath, clearing your throat while heat rose your your face at his suggestion and the noise of surprise that escaped your mouth

Techno couldn't deny that his heart warmed just a little at the small things you began to pick up from him

“Fight with me,” he drew out his sword, turning around and facing you with the weapon raised in the air, “I wanna see what you’re made of ‘Survivor’. So come on, lets fight,”

This was the first time techno actually talked to you directly, uttered words other that demands, silly excuses or grunts of acknowledgement

“I-” you let out a deep breath, shakily taking out your own sword, “Okay, okay,”

After establishing some rules, the duel began.

He let you take the first hit, barely dealing him damage but you got the second hit as well, knocking him down two hearts

He was quick to regain himself, taking three hearts with his sword and a free hit with his bow

That gave you the idea to take out your own, running a good distance away and getting three shots in

It was a close fight, you didn’t mind if you lost. Fighting Technoblade was already an honour as it was

Then you jumped of a piece of stone, landing a crit and watched his items fall to the floor

Technoblade was slain by Y/n 

You let out a short breath, eyes widening in shock that you had just won

You just killed Technoblade

“I was only going easy on you- I- What enchantment do you have on your sword? You have creative mode don’t you? Yeah, you have creative mode... there’s just no way-”

You bit your lip, trying to suppress your laughs as the blood god ran over to pick up his items with a red face

“Hey! Hey don’t laugh! This isn’t a laughing matter!”

“It- it kind of is.” you said shyly, putting away your sword and eating some steak to regain the health you lost, “If it makes you feel better, I had one heart...”

“oNe hEaRt! She had one heart chat! What is this-”

His words had you rolling on the floor, wiping your eyes of the tears falling from your at how hard you were laughing

“What- What do I have to do for you to keep this between us-” he whispered after you calmed, looking around the the space, making sure it was just you and him

You shrugged, “Nothing really- I- uh, i didn’t mean to kill you... I’m sorry-”

Sorry? Who the fuck says sorry for killing someone

Who says sorry for killing him?

If anything you should be gloating, getting a billbourd and displaying the chat message for everyone to see

He’s never been gladder that nobody else was connected to the chat at the time

“I was going easy on you.”

“I- sure, sure okay...” you thought about it for a second, “If so... then why don’t you teach me the things you didn’t try? Like techniques and stuff...”

He froze at your suggestion, “You want- you want to learn from me?”

“Yeah!” you beamed, “You were... a big inspiration for me growing up and, I would love to learn from the source and not just through tails and stories.”

He thought about it for a bit, usually he would rely on his voices but they were all just insulting him

He didn’t see the harm in it, out of all the children on the SMP, he tolerated you the most

That and you had potential, it was rare to find someone with such skills and who acted humble with them

He sighed, patting the top of your head with a huff, “Sure... Sure why not.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah sure, I mean what’s the harm in it right?” he ruffled your hair

The action made your eyebrows rise and when you looked back up at the piglin hybrid, all you saw was the smile of your brother looking down at you

“Hey, everything alright?” he questioned, noticing your sudden glossy eyes

You quickly rubbed them with your knuckles, “Yeah, yeah I- I just forgot something at Pogtopia,” you said, backing away with an embarrassed smile, “I’ll meet you back there,”

“Sure, sure... I’ll just continue hunting,”

As you ran away he let out a deep breath, taking out swords and looking down at it with a scoff

“Chat... we never speak of this... again.”

After that, the both of you were inseparable 

Going on adventures with each other, looting and exploring together

Where ever he went, you followed in his footsteps as he taught you about whatever he could

He even took you to his secret base and allowed you to help him in gathering supplies to help the fight

“What’s with the pig by the way?”

“It’s my emotional support pig.”

“And his name is bladey?”

“...”

“It’s a short for bladder...now what were you saying about poisoned arrows?”

And while you appreciated the action, your favourite times where the calm ones

When he would take you up to a hight tower or hill so the both of your could relax, maybe eat some mushroom stew as he told you stories of his own adventures 

You opened up to him as well, telling him about your family and your village, how you were travelling around with so sense of direction

It was strange how easily he trusted you, maybe it was because you had similar experiences as him

You understood him and he understood you

You also began to make good friends with the rest of Pogtopia along with everyone else who started to betray shlatt and join there side, becoming more open with the reassurance from Techno that they weren’t bad people

You fit in well, a lot more that he did

You had potential for a bloodless life, he saw that

He didn’t want you to make the same mistakes as him, he didn’t want you to live the same isolated life

And while you agreed with his thoughts on anarchy, he didn’t want to you to have any part in what he was doing.

So when L’Manburg was taken back and Tubbo was but in power, he felt a sense of dread opening his enderchest and taking out his six wither skulls

Don’t let the wither’s hurt them

You’re going to hurt them more that they are

You won’t be able to protect

Protect them at all costs

It wasn’t just the voices that felt the urge to keep you safe

Over the months he’s grown a liking to you, treating you like his own student and teaching you the things he wish he knew at your age

But he could also be the one to corrupt you.

And he didn’t have the heart to find out which way it would go

You caught sight of the skulls in his hands before he switched to his sword, a hard look on his face as everyone began fighting each other

“Techno?” you walked up to him, “Are you-”

“Yeah... yeah I am.” he puffed out his chest, pulling you the side, “Look, things are about to get messy and when they do I want you to run-”

You knew where this was going, flashbacks of your brother fighting one of the pillagers to save you as you ran away to safe yourself, sacrificing himself for you

“No.” you cut him off before he could continue.

While you knew Techno was going to come out of this alive, you had the power to help him now, to help everyone, you didn’t need to run anymore

You considered Techno family now, well the closest thing you had to it and you weren't about to loose that

Not again.

“I’m staying with you Tech,”

He shook his head, “If you do, L’manburg would never look at you the same, you’ll be an outcast once again-”

“Then do what you have to do, but I’m not running away. What happens here is because of everyone’s belief and I believe in safety and protection so that is what I’ll provide.” you took out your sword smirking, “Plus, we all know what happened last time when you tried to fight me,”

“I thought you promised to never speak of this again!”

“I’m sorry I had to-”

“Okay kid, okay...” he took a deep breath, “Just stay clear of dream and his crew... and the withers... Actually? here take some golden apples-”

“Just go be an anarchist Techno,” you pushed him forwards, rolling your eyes, “I’ll be fine.”

“Actually, take this God apple and a few more potions-”

“I already have some-”

“Well take more. And some extra armor... just in case-” he threw the items at you before running away and setting up the soul sand, not wanting anyone to catch on to what he was doing

And with one final look around following the conclusion of his speech, he placed the skulls, unleashing ultimate chaos on the land once called L’manburg

...

Sorry this took so long! I always get ahead of myself with requests and end up writing a lot more that planned but i hope you enjoyed! I was making this so long that I had to spit this into part two, maybe part three to cover the rest of the lore and to be able to develop more on their relationship besides backstory

That and i really want to write the execution scene but this was already 4k words... 

Feedback always appreciated🥰

[bvccy]

Friend, if you are still open for request, can you please do Heliotrope with the Winter Soldier? 🥺 please thank you 💛💛💛

My dear 😭 I am so so sorry for how long this took! I just hope you can enjoy the fic. It’s a little bit spooky at the beginning, but WS is soft and so is our reader. And they get their happy-ever-after 💗

Thank you very much for this prompt also! 🌺🌺🌺

— PAIRING: soft!Winter Soldier x female!Reader — PROMPT: Heliotrope - walking in the sun, and losing each other — LINKS: Masterlist • love stones prompt list — WORDCOUNT: 2.1k

They had been living in darkness for months, and the oppressive cold that battered against the walls with fierce winds all day, and hungry howls at night — not that one could tell night from day in the sunless vastness, except by the ticking of the clock.

Hydra had installed that arctic facility at the mouth of a crater, covered by ice over the ages to conceal its dubious treasure. It was clear to the Soldier that the treasure was not made up of precious things, but it was only when the crew finished digging all the way down that he understood why all the scientists were there...

It was difficult for him to tell who the shuttle belonged to. It might have been some advanced technology from America, but then how did it get so deep down, so quickly? Maybe it was an old German prototype from the war, but it didn't look like any he'd seen before. Or maybe Hydra was just recovering their old property from past attempts... It didn't matter, he was just there to guard the scientists while they did the work.

The other soldiers stationed with him stopped taking the job seriously after the first three months, but he kept watch, and paid attention, and didn't miss the odd slimes that seeped across the floor out of those metal shells, nor the odd crunch as the scientists cut into something that looked soft and milky, but held like bone. And the smells, the cold metallic smells like iron dipped in silver... It sometimes felt like home, but he knew better than to let that grip him. And he kept watch.

The one chemist that doubled as the chef didn't make particularly good meals, but they were hearty, and if he was being honest, he was eating better at this isolated station than he did at the Base — felt freer too, almost in charge of his destiny, if one didn't count the frozen wastes he'd have to survive if he ever wanted to run. But the Soldier couldn't imagine why he'd ever wish to run.

Especially when she was here.

Studying the files of all the scientists on the mission, her portrait stood out as particularly sad, morose, with a bit of a death glare toward the cameraman. But when he actually saw her, she seemed sweet like a spring day and even happy to be there. She looked up into his eyes as she walked into the protected area to study their find, blinking up from beneath a mess of furs and protective equipment, but there was a smile crinkling around her gaze. As the months drew on and everyone got more bored with staying there, and loose with themselves, they'd sometimes play some music in the lab, and the Soldier didn't know why he liked it so much or felt the need to dance with someone.

The military staff initially had their own mess hall, a small room with a kitchenette where they could eat together, but then one of the doctors needed it to test the effects of temperature changes on some of the samples, and the place was... contaminated every since. Now, they all ate together. The girl who'd caught his eye tended to eat with her own team, the Geologists, but he could feel her looking at him sometimes, he noticed her lingering when he was around even if she was about to leave, and a few times she even dared approach him — under the excuse of getting the jar of sugar that was on his other side rather than reaching for the one next to her, or leaning down to get some plate she didn't need from right by his knees. It wasn't until she tried to reach a glass above his head, beyond her grasp, that he gave in and acknowledged her.

"Thank you," she said as he handed her the cup — the first time she'd ever said anything to him. Her voice suited her, but beyond its soft tones the Soldier was struck by being thanked at all. When was the last time that happened? What did one say in response?

"You're welcome?"

And he seemed so unsure saying it that he made her giggle.

She was inevitable after that, not because she was trying to be found but because he allowed himself to be around her, to guard her door while she chipped at stones and studied them, to sit near her during lunch — not right beside her, the Soldier still had a lingering shyness about that, but at least on the table opposite, from which they could look at each other if they wanted.

The long night was almost over, four months into their stay at this forsaken place, and the pair had taken to something really dangerous: in the small barn attached to the base, where some dry supplies were kept along with canisters of fuel, they escaped together while everyone else slept. He had led her there first, asking timidly whether she'd...

"Want to see something new?"

"Always," the girl grinned.

And so they found themselves piled on top of one another like firewood, almost not feeling each other beneath the layers of fur that kept them warm, but just being in each other's presence was... something. It was quiet without being quiet, with another real soul there, thinking its own thoughts in harmony with you.

The Asset wouldn't allow himself to fall asleep, though he did close his eyes sometimes and let the girl relax against him, and doze off, and during those times he allowed his arm to come down from where it propped his head up and wrap itself around her, holding her still — as if she were in danger of falling off some imaginary bed.

Nobody ever seemed to wonder where they both disappeared to, nobody noticed, which was why he was all the more surprised to hear shouting on that day. The Soldier didn't move, just tightened his arm around his little partner more. But when a bloodcurdling cry echoed through the vastness, he shook her awake.

"Wha—"

"Get up. The base is under attack," he muttered, reaching for the rifle laid beside him.

"That's crazy, who would attack us all the way out here?"

He didn't want to tell her what he thought, but only made her hide out in the shed while he went out to scout the area. Turning his radio on, nothing came through. There were no helicopters around, no trucks, no marks in the snow that anyone had attacked — at least, not from the outside. On the horizon, just the rays of a reluctant dawn were shining.

There was silence for a while, and then another symphony of screams rang out, muffled by the walls and the desperate shots of whoever was left inside, glass and metal knocked over, broken, and silence once again. Stepping away slowly, then more hurriedly, the Soldier returned to where he'd left the girl and picked her up by the elbow.

"Come on, we're leaving."

"Leaving where?" she cried out, confused and even slightly angry. "What's going on?"

"We're under attack."

"But our research..."

The Soldier dragged her to where the trucks were parked, and after the first flush of confusion she went along quietly. He gave her the rifle to hold while he looked in the back, making sure they had enough supplies for whatever drive awaited them — gas was there, some blankets too, and more ammunition. It would have to do. And without sparing another moment, he got in beside her and drove off. Against the rumbling of the engine as it drifted on the ice, a shrill scream cut through the frozen air and reached them, not sounding human nor animal nor like anything in the world, except perhaps a demon. The girl didn't look back, she wouldn't dare, she just looked quietly at the Soldier as she slowly understood. They drove into the sunrise as its rays burned away everything behind, and the snowdrifts buried it.

They didn't stop until the sky was bright as a midday, many hours later.

"Are we slowing down?" the girl mumbled sleepily.

"We're nearing a town," he said, eyes on the GPS. "Need to check that the road is clear. And that we are, too."

She stretched the shivers from her bones, but deep down she trusted the Soldier to keep them safe.

Getting out in what-felt-like days, frozen stiff, muscles aching from the shot of fear that penetrated down to her bones, the girl got out and reached for the sky with all she had. The air felt freer and fresher than ever before, even though it still hurt her lungs when it reached to their very bottom, but she loved such a pain — it felt like life.

The Asset walked slowly to her, just watching silently and smiling a half-smile at the sight of her all ruffled and soft, and safe.

"What do you think happened to the base?"

"Guess it's a mess by now," he hummed, bringing one gloved hand to feel around her head, her shoulders, down her arms, but always gently.

"We woke that thing up, didn't we?"

"You're the smart one, you tell me."

Her lips pursed — she never liked it when he teased her, but she tried never to reproach him for it, loving this sign of his personality shining through. "Are we far enough away now?"

"I don't know," he sighed, finally looking back into her eyes. "Are we?"

"The sun would kill it."

"How do you know that?"

She didn't answer but wouldn't look away either, and her determined gaze was enough for him. She did know more than he did, she'd spent months studying whatever that was, and that was fine by him. So long as none of it had managed to sneak on board.

"Stay close to me."

They walked around the car together and he checked the back, the wheels, then climbed on top and checked there too. Through the clearness of the day, he could even see the edges of a road that must've lead to that town. The car seemed clean, but they were close enough to a rescue that he'd rather not take any risks, and so picking up just a few useful things and one backpack, they started walking.

The snow got less deep and crunched beneath their boots, the wind was gentler downhill and even moved through the tendrils loosened from their hoods, shaking off the frost. In the distance, one tree stood tall, thin and dark and barren but alive, and over all of them the sun kept shining.

"We're almost at the road," said the Soldier, spotting a black snaking line a few meters ahead. He turned his head when he didn't hear anything back, but there was only the glint of sunlight on the snow.

Amorphous fog covered the horizons, and hills and dales of white, and suddenly the light felt very hot and burned his body as he turned frantically around and called for her. With mad fear, he traced back their steps up the snowy hill, nearly swimming through it as he called for her, terrified of the unthinkable.

Then, as if from the sea, a lone hand reached up and waved at him. Within one breath, he'd reached her, sitting in the snow just a few feet away.

"I'm so tired..." she huffed, burrowing like a rabbit. "Can't we rest a while?"

"You didn't rest enough in the car? Get up," he grumbled, pulling her up to her feet. He regretted snapping as soon as he saw her sad little face, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I was worried."

"I'm sorry too, for being so weak..."

Before thinking, he pulled her in and kissed the snow off her mouth. "None of that," he smiled as their lips parted. "Come on, we're so close. I'll carry you a bit if you want."

The girl shook her head mutely, face already flushed from frost but now truly heated. To be cared for, and worried about, and searched like that, and kissed... It put the life right back into her.

He kept his word and carried her in his arms at one point, but they both walked in the town together. Nobody knew who they were or where they came from and some had a few murmured questions, but by the time Hydra sent an extraction team for them, it didn't matter — they were gone, lost in the wind like two rays of sunshine.

[smoothie-sailing]

The freedom we give to ourselves

How does one find freedom in a cruel and cynical world? What does freedom even mean? What would it feel like? How will we know when we see it? These have been recurring questions throughout this story. We seem to explore attempts at the answer to this question through the perspective of characters.

Kenny Ackerman’s life in pursuit of power led him to realise a truth about himself and the people around him. this idea of being drunk on something. That People need something to believe in to keep them going, to keep them from being broken by life’s suffering. Something that they hope gives each of their lives meaning. Each character’s pursuit towards this idea is what they believe will give them freedom from suffering.

Zeke was no exception to this, he sees the suffering he experienced as a suffering inherent in being an Eldian in this world. He was drunk on the idea that his and the collective suffering would stop if Eldians ceased to exist.

Despite this proposition, Zeke was able to find true freedom not by pursuing his personal mission through to the end but by letting it go. This push to move forward: to explain himself, his life, his suffering. It has brought him only more dissatisfaction and pain. He kept moving forward and when Eren took power from Ymir he was just sitting inert in Paths. It is not until his conversation with Armin that he truly looks back and reflects. Armin talks about a time where he was just having an aimless moment shared between loved ones. Zeke looks within and finds himself playing catch with Xaver. It has no meaning but it is a moment in his life where he’s not suffering but nor is he striving to push forward with some grand purpose. He is simply… existing. Without complication. Without justification. He is just someone who exists in this world because he was born into it. A simple moment with a profound effect: that life has intrinsic value and purpose regardless of how cruel it may seem. Zeke has now found that peace he was looking for his entire life. That feeling stays with him right up to the moments of his death. He can’t take back all the blood he has shed but for a few moments to take in the clear sky of the day. He can just exist.

There has been an exhaustive debate in and out of the story of who or what the true devil of humanity is supposed to be. The devil of all earth that plagues humanity. I don’t believe it is Eren but I do believe he is the person in the story most seduced by it. I put forward that the devil of humanity isn’t a person born once in a generation, it is not a creature or some sort of supernatural force. The devil of humanity is the cycle of violence itself. A tiny glimmer of light or fear of the dark that pushes us into war, into chaos, into hell.

We may believe we see something beyond it. Something we can gain or something we fear will be taken from us if we don’t answer the call: “Do this and your dream will come true, you will be safe, you will be loved, the pain will stop” Just once. Then once again. Then once more. Before you know it, you are gripping the wheel of a sinking ship so heavy you have no hope of turning it on your own. But that may be the very thing that can stop it. Hope. The hope you give yourself in small acts of faith. Kindness. Compassion. Empathy. Seeing beyond the walls that trap your spirit. Not to seek out freedom taken from you but to reconnect with the freedom you always had that never left, your humanity.

If this is Isayama’s message, that freedom is in finding one’s humanity. One finds freedom by reconnecting with their humanity. I put forward that the most free person in this story has been Mr Blouse, Sasha’s father.

Mr Blouse is the person in the story most consistently connected to his own humanity and humanity as a collective whole. He makes it a principle to stay connected to it. So much so that when given a justifiable choice to take revenge on Gabi for killing his daughter. He instead chose to forgive her and console both her and Niccolo showing her the most humane act she had ever received. She did not have to justify her existence as a good Eldian in that moment, she was accepted as another person who deserved to exist even if she’d made mistakes.

From Gabi’s experience and perspective, nothing made more sense than Mr Blouse killing her for what she did. What he decided to do was so simple yet its impact was profound. He reached Gabi because he saw something real beyond answering hate with hate. He sees a precious freedom beyond this cycle, and now thanks to what he did Gabi can see beyond it too and was able to find her humanity.

How does this relate to the main character of the story, Eren. Eren’s case is a very tragic one. No one is more emotionally attached to the idea of freedom than Eren, it has a specific imprint within his psyche. However there also lies the imprint of the wall within his psyche and all the trauma associated with it. From an early age Eren, at his most traumatised, found a resolve to find freedom from this horrific nightmare by destroying those who took his freedom from him at any cost. But in finding this resolve and trusting it above anything else, he had unknowingly damned himself.

The wall is so strongly associated with trauma in Eren’s mind, and now with the release of the wall titans, he is literally weaponizing his trauma and aiming it at the rest of the world. Yams is establishing that humanity is the only real freedom we have and Eren had always expected freedom to be beyond the walls. However, because of Eren’s compounded trauma, humanity is the ultimate enemy. In sacrificing his humanity and wiping all of it from the outside world, he is destroying the freedom he wanted for himself and for everyone in the world.

This happens all in the basement of his old home in Shiganshina. Eren was on the cusp of moving beyond his trauma when suddenly all of that pain, all of those triggers were reformatted, given new context when he learned the truth of his world. Why all of this pain and suffering happened to him. Once he met the formative father of his new world rebirth – Eren Kruger.

Eren has found stability in this turmoil by latching onto Kruger’s mindset, believing Kruger to embody what he needs to be to save those he cares about. In this new large and scary world, Eren sees Kruger as the person he will have to be to exist, to make a change. Eren has assimilated Kruger into his identity, evident from Eren taking Kruger’s name during his time spent in Marley. In how we are introduced to him post time skip, Eren is pursuing action using Kruger’s words to young Grisha about the Zeppelin.

Freedom is hard fought and after fighting tooth and nail and suffering and pushing as hard as he can, he will have his freedom.

Culminating in the Jaeger trio at the Reiss family cave, we finally see how far Eren’s resolve has pushed him. Eren is not the devil but he is the one most seduced by it (pushing forward the cycle of violence). He tells Grisha to do this to justify his own belief that this was necessary. To sacrifice his humanity, the humanity he managed to find in the walls after a life of pain and anger as soldier of revolutionary radicalism. For Eren, sacrificing one’s humanity is what is necessary. But Eren misunderstood what he was supposed to take away from Kruger’s life.

There is an additional meaning behind Kruger’s final words to Grisha – in sacrificing his humanity to get to this point, he has lost everything precious to him. All that exists is the end goal, the zeppelin. Seeing the zeppelin is… all there is. It won’t give you back what you lost or what you have told yourself you need to take back: aka your humanity. Eren’s “sight” is the zeppelin and he believes seeing it will give him back the freedom taken from him. It’s no coincidence that Grisha looks like Eren when he reflects on the day that traumatised him the most.

We see Kruger talking to Grisha further after he is given his mission. As Kruger prepares the serum for Grisha he mentions that he won’t know who will be watching this memory. If we take the ironic nature of this story into consideration, this can also mean that he doesn’t know if whomever is watching these memories will stop watching before he is about to say what he says. It takes place at the end of the chapter after we see Eren finding his new resolve and coming to grips with what he has learned and what he needs to do.  This may be implying that this further discussion between Kruger and Grisha is something that Eren didn’t actually see. Kruger’s final important message to Grisha is to love someone. Be it a wife, a friend, the people around you. In specific terms, treasure your humanity and preserve it no matter what happens. Like Mr. Blouse, treasure the humanity found in others, even in enemies who have wronged you or may wrong you. Because that is what it means to find life intrinsically valuable.  That is the only way to end this cycle of violence and ironically what Kruger has realised after losing so much of his own and now Eren in turn.

So if the path to freedom is to find one’s humanity does this mean that the cycle of violence can be wiped out and the devil of humanity will stop plaguing the world? I don’t think that’s a question Yam’s is capable of answering nor does he intend to. 

However, I think he may propose that if it is possible for the main character of the story, the one who has been the most seduced by the cycle of violence and spilled the most blood is able to give himself back his humanity after willingly sacrificing so much of it. Then there is hope for anyone of us to find true freedom. Not everyone, but anyone. Because not just knowing but realising that we are all human, and valuing that, is what makes us truly free.

[elareine]

I'm hoping I didnt miss out on your open prompts but I was wondering if I could get some Jason and Damian being best brothers? Like maybe Damian gets de-aged and with his league training he figured it out and then asks for Jason anyways because his big brother said he would always be with him so obviously he has to be there now too,no matter how many years Damian has lost.

Bruce doesn’t understand. 

Damian has been turned into a small(er) child. Magic, of course. They know the curse will only last a day, so that’s fine. The magical artifact that caused all this has been destroyed and its user thoroughly reprimanded. 

The bigger problem is that Damian, even at four-years-old, isn’t exactly like normal children. 

“Jason,” his son says again. 

“He’s not here.”

“De-aged,” the kid says, pointing at itself. 

Bruce stares. “Yes. Yes, you were. Jason is not living with us.” 

“Doesn’t matter. He’s my brother.” 

“Yes, but—“ 

“Jason.” Uh-oh. Are those tears? “I want my brother.” 

Bruce sighs. It’s worth a try, right? It takes him a bit to find Jason’s current phone number—time Damian spends getting increasingly upset; he looks ready to cry—and when he finally makes the call, he’s greeted with: “You have ten seconds.” 

“Jason. Please.” He uses that word rarely enough that he bets Jason won’t hang up on him, and he’s right. 

“What.” 

“Damian is asking for you,” he says and listens to the hitch of breath on the other end of the line. It tells Bruce everything he needs to know. “He is also currently about four.” 

“Can’t even deal with a crying child on your own? Alright. Gimme five.”

Four minutes later, Jason drives into the Batcave, and Damian’s whole face lights up. He whispers something in League dialect, and when Jason returns the word, Damian tears away from Bruce and runs toward him. 

“It’s okay,” Jason says in English, catching him. When Damian clings to him—no tear, but a grip that Bruce knows has to hurt—he switches back to the dialect, gentle words in a firm voice. 

The only word Bruce recognizes is safe, and his throat tightens. 

Finally, Damian nods and motions to be set down. 

“We will go up,” he tells Bruce. 

“Of course.” Bruce looks to Jason, who nods at him. I’ll keep an eye on him. 

As soon as they leave, Bruce turns on the surveillance cameras. It’s not that he thinks Jason will allow Damian to be hurt; he just... wants to watch them. They play, or maybe it’s training. Either way, Damian is grinning, and Jason indulges him. After, there is reading, and chess, and a discussion that Bruce cannot hear but must assume is serious. 

It gives Bruce plenty of time to think. He has a chance here, he thinks. Maybe, for once, he won’t fuck it up. 

Finally, hours later, everything goes quiet. When Bruce enters Damian’s room, his youngest is asleep, head pillowed on Jason’s thighs. He doesn’t move when Bruce sits down next to him. 

For a minute or two, Bruce allows himself to enjoy the silence. It wakes memories of times that have long passed; this quiet togetherness with no expectations except companionship. 

“I wasn’t aware you two know each other so well.” Bruce's voice is low. 

Jason looks down at the kid in his lap. “We… I guess I was around during his childhood. His parentage was a closely guarded secret, by the way; I didn’t know shit. Anyway. Maybe Talia thought it was ironic to have me babysit him, but I did, a lot. He’s… yeah. I guess we were close.” 

“So why did you stop when you were both in Gotham?” 

“He’s your son.” Jason’s eyes stay averted. 

I’m not. 

“That,” Bruce says, “is bullshit. If you think I don’t miss you every day—if you think it doesn’t hurt—“

“Well, shit, it wasn’t exactly fun for me either,” Jason hisses back. “Being exploded hurts, in case you were wondering.”

“I’m not talking about losing you when—when you died,” Bruce corrects him. “I’m talking about every week we go without speaking.” 

Jason snorts. “You mean the ones where you don’t yell at me for being an evil killer?”

“You’re not. I have never doubted your judgment, only your right to make it. And even then… I don’t—I find that I don’t care anymore if it means I can have you back,” he confesses. It feels like the worst thing he’s ever said, and the best. 

Jason shakes his head, clearly not believing him. 

“And I understand if that’s not enough,” Bruce makes himself say, even though he doesn’t, not really. “Or if you want nothing to do with me. But… if you want to spend time with Damian, I will encourage it.” 

That, finally, seems to get through to Jason. He frowns. “You… would?” 

Bruce nods. “His path has been difficult enough.” 

Jason snorts and mumbles something like “Understatement.” 

“I wouldn’t deny him this comfort. And I… I don’t understand him,” Bruce admits. “I don’t understand you, either.” 

“That bugs the hell out of you, doesn’t it?” Jason asks unexpectedly. 

Bruce feels a wry smile spread across his face. “Of course it does.” He’s never dealt with blind spots well, and they both know it. He’s just surprised that Jason brought it up. 

“He’s not me, if that helps. Dami was raised to kill, and he’s choosing differently, now.” 

“Both of you view it as a choice,” Bruce points out as gently as he knows how. “But that wasn’t what I was talking about.” 

Jason doesn’t ask what it was. Instead, he runs a gentle hand through Damian’s hair and says: “I’ll think about it. But don’t get your hopes up, old man.” 

Bruce smiles and doesn’t reply. It feels like a victory, anyway.

(I’m taking prompts until the end of the year.)

[disneygirl626]

Peter Parker x Reader :Journey: (2/2)

(Y/n) stood sideways in front of the mirror, a frown etched deep in her features.

“If you keep frowning like that your face is going to get stuck.”

She jumped and turned, watching her husband walk over to her. “Haha, very funny.”

“What’re you doing anyway?” Peter asked with a chuckle.

“Pete, look, the baby bump is already showing! They’re going to see right through me!” (Y/n) said, looking back at the mirror and placing her hands on her stomach.

While she was right, there was a bump, that’s also all it was. A bump. Barely even that, to be honest.

“Honey, I don’t think they’ll notice it,” Peter said, wrapping his arms around his wife from behind. His hands landed on her stomach and she smiled.

“What time is dinner again?” (Y/n) asked.

“Pepper said to be there at 6, but Tony said 7 so I have no idea,” Peter said, earning a laugh from (Y/n).

“May and Happy are coming too, right?” (Y/n) asked.

“Yep. How do you think we should tell everyone about the baby?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know. There’s so many options!” (Y/n) had been watching YouTube videos all day in preparation. She figured this is something they should’ve planned beforehand, but time had gotten away from her and before she knew it it was the day of the dinner and they still had no plan.

“We could do the picture thing,” Peter suggested.

“But who would take it?” (Y/n) asked as she went back to getting ready.

Peter plopped down on their bed with a bounce. “Oh yeah… Why don’t we do the onesie thing? Where it says ‘coming soon’ or something like that.”

“I think you have to have those custom made,” (Y/n) said.

The couple sat in silence, each racking their brains to think of something.

“What do you think of the ultrasound idea?” (Y/n) asked.

“Nah, it needs to be more creative,” Peter said, making his wife smirk.

“What’s that look for?” Peter asked, grinning.

“You’re just adorable,” (Y/n) said.

Peter’s grin widened before it slowly started to fade. “Have you.. have you thought anymore about telling your parents?”

His wife’s smile faded as well. After (Y/n) had gotten engaged to Peter, she and her family had gotten into a huge argument with her family. Her parents highly disapproved of Peter and wanted (Y/n) to go back to school instead of settling down so quickly.

They’d been invited to the wedding but no one had shown up. When Tony found out about that, he had offered to walk (Y/n) down the aisle and give her away. To say that she had started crying was an understatement.

Anyway, she hadn’t heard from her family since before the wedding so she hadn’t planned on telling them about the baby.

“I’ve thought about it. I just don’t know, Peter. There’s only two ways this could go and neither of them are good.”

“It’s completely up to you, (N/n). I’ll support whatever you choose,” Peter said. (Y/n) gave him a small smile.

She finished getting ready, but couldn’t shake that thought out of her head. If she did try to call them they could either ignore her or answer and give her a lecture about how she’s too young to be a mom and yada yada yada.

Her and Peter discussed how to surprise the rest of the family during the whole ride to the compound and came up with the perfect plan.

(Y/n) began shaking with nervous excitement as they pulled up to the compound.

“You ok?” Peter asked, frowning a little bit.

“Mhm,” she replied, climbing out of the car as May came to greet them.

“Hi guys!” she said happily. She ran over to (Y/n) and squeezed her in a hug. “I’ve missed you both!”

(Y/n) laughed as she hugged May. “We’ve missed you too!”

“Are you ok? You look… different. Not bad different, just different. Like you’re… glowing almost.”

(Y/n) froze for a split second. Peter saved her from having to answer as he walked over and squeezed his aunt in a hug.

May eyed (Y/n) suspiciously as the trio headed inside, but she didn’t say anything else about it.

“Hey, lovebirds,” Tony said with a grin.

Peter rolled his eyes but (Y/n) just smirked. The night continued on with (Y/n) on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She was sure they saw right through her. What if they weren’t happy about it? What if they thought they were too young to be parents? Her mom had been in her life, but she wasn’t exactly the best mom in the world. What if she wasn’t a good mom? What if-

“Hey.”

(Y/n) pulled herself out of her spiral of worry and looked up to find her husband watching her with a frown. “You ok?” he whispered, giving her hand a squeeze.

She forced a smile and nodded. “I’m ok. Just… tired I guess.”

Peter didn’t look like he believed her, but they didn’t have the chance to talk about it before FRIDAY announced the takeout they ordered had arrived.

As they sat around the living room and munched on the food, (Y/n) caught her husband’s eye and nodded, biting her lip in a smile. Her hands trembled as she handed May and Happy and Tony and Pepper a small gift as the conversation died down.

“What’s this?” May asked suspiciously, eyeing the small rectangle box with a little smile.

“A present,” (Y/n) replied, sitting next to Peter and taking his hand.

The couple’s opened their respective boxes, pulling out a sandwich baggie with ‘Spider-baby coming soon!’ written on it and a positive pregnancy stick in it.

Pepper was the first to catch on. She let out a happy little scream and jumped up, throwing the baggie at Tony in the process.

(Y/n) stood as Pepper practically bounced over and threw her arms around her and Peter. (Y/n) laughed as May caught on next, having about the same reaction as Pepper. Happy and Tony caught on shortly after that. They were excited but their reaction was a bit calmer than the women.

The months seemed to fly by after that. The first trimester had been rough. Morning sickness had hit (Y/n) like a brick wall. Most of the time she could only eat a couple saltines and drink some chicken broth.

There had been one point where they’d almost had to go see Helen, but thankfully everything worked itself out. They did call Dr. Cho a couple times, but without being able to actually see (Y/n), she had to guess it was from the radiation that changed Peter’s DNA.

“But-but he or she isn’t going to be an actual spider-baby, right?” (Y/n) had asked, having gone pale.

“No, I don't think so, (Y/n). He or she might have some powers, but I highly doubt it,” Helen had replied.

During the second trimester, the morning sickness gradually left and (Y/n) was hit with a whole bunch of cravings. The second trimester became (Y/n)’s favorite part of the pregnancy. She was able to actually eat normal food without puking her guts out ten minutes later and she felt great!

“(Y/n), are you sure you should be up there?”

“Ned, relax, it’s just a ladder.”

“Exactly, it’s a ladder! It could topple over at any second!”

“It won’t if you’re holding it.”

Ned tightened his grip on the metal ladder as he watched one of his best friends attempt to paint the wall in front of her. They were keeping the baby’s gender a surprise until he or she was born, so they had been a pretty sage green for the walls.

Peter was returning tomorrow night from a  business trip with Stark Industries, so (Y/n) had called Ned and MJ to come help her decorate the nursery to surprise Peter.

The puking from the first trimester had taken its toll on (Y/n). She was a lot thinner now, except for the growing bump, and got dizzy pretty easily.

(Y/n) inched closer to the wall, much to Ned’s dismay. “(Y/n), do I need to call MJ?”

“No, I’m perfectly capable of doing this,” (Y/n) said, tongue poking out the side of her mouth as she concentrated on not hitting the ceiling.

“Capable of doing what?” MJ asked as she walked in. She carried bags from various baby stores, which she set in a pile in the middle of the room.

“(Y/n)’s trying to give me a heart attack,” Ned replied.

Said woman glared at him. “Am not.”

“(Y/n), do you really think you should be up there? What if you have a dizzy spell?” MJ asked, crossing her arms.

“I’ll be fine. Just let me get this last part then I’ll - oh!”

MJ and Ned raced over, but (Y/n) didn’t fall. Instead, she dropped the roller as her hand flew to her bump.

“What? What’s wrong?” Ned asked.

“He or she kicked!” (Y/n) said, grinning. She got down from the ladder and grabbed her friend’s hands, placing them on her belly. The baby kicked again, making grins pull at Ned and MJ’s lips.

“I wish Peter was here!” (Y/n) said, smiling bigger than she had  in a while.

“(Y/n)?” someone called, making all three heads turn to the living room.

“Peter!” (Y/n) said happily, running to the doorway. She planted a kiss on his lips before grabbing his hand and putting it on her belly.

“(Y/n), what-?”

“Shh! Just watch!”

Sure enough, the baby kicked Peter’s hand. “Whoa!”

He grinned and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug.

The third trimester brought cramps, swollen feet, and weekly checkups. As the baby grew bigger, (Y/n)’s body began having a hard time adjusting. She became iron deficient and was confined to bed rest within the last couple weeks of her pregnancy due to other complications.

“Peter, I swear, I’ll be ok. Go be Spider-man for a little bit. I’ll call you if anything happens,” (Y/n) said, giving her husband’s hand a squeeze.

“But-”

“No buts. Baby and I will be ok, I promise.”

“What if you have to go to the bathroom? Or what if you get hungry?” Peter asked.

“I called MJ. We’re going to have a girls night,” (Y/n) said, one hand rubbing her large stomach while the other held her husband’s hand tightly.

Peter hesitated. “You swear you’ll call me if anything happens?”

“Yes,” (Y/n) said with a loving smile.

“Fine. I’ll only be gone for a few hours though, ok?”

“Ok. Stay safe, love,” (Y/n) said, pecking his lips before he got up.

“You too,” Peter said. He gave her belly a kiss before suiting up and jumping out the window.

“I will never get used to that,” (Y/n) sighed.

MJ showed up half an hour later and the girls filled up with junk food and cheesy rom-coms.

“So when are you due?” MJ asked as she left to refill the popcorn bucket.

“Two more weeks. But we don’t even know if it’ll actually happen on that day,” (Y/n) said, resting her head on the pillow behind her as she scrolled through Instagram.

A sharp pain shot through her body, making her wince. She didn’t think much of it, it’s been happening a lot lately. Then water began pooling under her thighs. She paled and muttered a curse.

“Uh.. Michelle?”

“I’m coming! Don’t play the movie yet!” MJ called back.

“MJ, my water broke!”

A crash came from the kitchen as MJ ran back into the bedroom. “Are you ok? Does anything hurt?”

“No-no, I’m ok. What-what should I do?” (Y/n) said as the situation began to set in.

“Call Peter. I’ll get your bag and your shoes,” MJ said.

(Y/n) had never been more thankful for her friend’s calmness before now. She tried her husband five times before giving up and leaving a message. She then tried Tony, who answered on the third ring.

“Hey, (Y/n), what’s up?”

“Tony, my water just broke and I can’t get a hold of my husband. I sent him out to be Spider-man for a little bit, but now he’s not answering!”

“OK, stay calm, (N/n). I’ll go look for him and make sure everything’s ok. Are you by yourself?”

“No, MJ is here with me. Call me when you find him!” (Y/n) said as MJ ran back in with (Y/n)’s sandals and hospital bag.

“Will do, kid.”

They hung up and called the hospital. Due to all of her complications so far, they told her to come in right away.

So MJ hailed a cab and helped her very pregnant friend down the stairs and into said cab. ON the way, they call Ned who met them at the hospital.

(Y/n) was called back into a room almost immediately with her friends by her side.

“Anything from Tony?” (Y/n) asked MJ.

As if on cue, her phone began ringing. MJ put it on speaker and said, “Tony? Did you find him?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. We’re on our way now. How’s she doing?”

“I’m fine, just get here quickly please!” (Y/n) said.

“We’re almost there!” Tony said before they hung up.

Well, after that phone call things rapidly went downhill. They gave her an epidural, and shortly after that (Y/n)’s blood pressure began dropping drastically, resulting in some panicked nurses and doctors.

(Y/n) began having trouble staying awake and the epidural wasn’t even working, which meant she was still in pain.

“MJ!”

MJ and Ned looked up from the seat they’d claimed as Peter and Tony ran in. Peter had a black eye and a cut on his cheek, but other than that he looked ok.

“Where is she? Is she ok?” Peter asked.

“Her blood pressure is dropping. They kicked us out,” Ned said.

“She’s in that room,” MJ said, pointing discreetly to the room across from them.

Peter raced in to find his pregnant wife pale and asleep while a doctor and nurse talked next to her. They both looked up when Peter walked in.

“I’m Peter, I’m her husband. What’s going on?” he said quickly.

“We’re going to have to do an emergency c-section, it’s not healthy for your wife or your baby if we try to wait,” the doctor said.

So that’s what happened. Almost three hours later, the Spider-baby was brought into the world and (Y/n)’s blood pressure started rising back to normal. She woke up almost thirty minutes after the baby was born to find Peter sitting next to her bed and holding her hand.

“Is the baby ok? Where-what happened?” she asked weakly.

“The baby is great. They have her in the NICU just to be safe for a couple days, but they said as soon as you feel like it we can go visit  her,” Peter said, a soft smile on his face.

“Her? It’s a girl?” (Y/n) asked, smiling.

“We have a daughter, (N/n),” Peter said.

They found (Y/n) a wheelchair then went straight to the NICU.

“You must be Baby Parker’s parents. She’s doing great, she should be able to leave in a few days,” a nurse said with a kind smile.

“Thank you,” Peter said.

“Pete, she’s so beautiful,” (Y/n) said with tears in her eyes.

“What should we name her?” Peter asked.

“You pick the first name and I’ll pick the middle name,” (Y/n) said.

“Clara,” Peter said almost instantly.

“May,” (Y/n) said, just as quickly.

They smiled. “Clara May Parker.”

——

A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks for reading! I know I brought up the parent thing, then never did anything with it so I was thinking of doing a little spinoff oneshot of this later on. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these twoshots!

[danganronpa-21]

Naegiri Week Day 3 - Sunset

Happy third day of Naegiri Week! In my personal opinion, this is probably my favourite piece that I’ve written this year. It’s a sweet one with just a twinge of angst. As with the past two pieces, I have no warnings to issue aside from a little bit of graphically violent metaphor. It’s a blink and you’ll miss it kind of thing though, so there’s no need to worry too much. I hope you enjoy the piece, and that I have done our beautiful couple some justice.

________________________

A boy and a girl stood on top of the school building; their gazes turned towards the sky. The day was in the process of dying slowly, the natural cerulean fading away, melting into colours the likes of which they almost never got to see. Life so often dragged them away from something as simple as watching the sky’s transitions. Before, when the times would begin to change, they would spend their time preparing for cram school or going out to do extra work. They nearly never took notice of the refashioning. Maybe, if they were lucky, they’d stop for a second and remark to themselves about its beauty. Their eyes would catch just a hint of the rosy pinks and fruity oranges, and they could smile to themselves about what a nice view they would have during their journeys. Then, just as they always did, they would move along with their day. Never taking notice of the sky again, and missing it turn to something much more beautiful than what they had previously seen.

 Getting to ignore a sunset, they quickly realized, was a privilege. A privilege that they could no longer have. When the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in human history came to fruition, there was no time for trivial things like watching a sunset. Every day melted into a flurry of rioting, fighting, and danger that could eat them alive if they weren’t careful. The students of Hope’s Peak Academy got the worst of it, and Makoto and Kyoko were no exception to this rule. Walking onto campus every morning was gambling for one’s life as the Parade clamoured for justice at the gates. Makoto’s own parents had been so terrified of him getting assaulted on his way from their house to the school that they’d begged the headmaster to set him up in a dorm for the time being. And since Jin Kirigiri was a slightly foolish, but not entirely unreasonable man, he obliged. In the end, however, it only made things a little better. He and Kyoko still promised to walk every day to and from class together every day, just to be sure that the other would arrive safely.

 It was no real life that the two of them were living, but then again, they wondered if anybody’s life was much of anything at this point. This wave of anger that consumed more than just Tokyo. It reigned across the entirety of Japan, and bled even further. Neighbouring countries began to get caught up in the tide, and then their neighbours came in, and then their allies, and then their enemies. Before anyone could so much as breathe a word of soothing nature, the world had sliced itself open and soaked its people with its bloody rage. Now, all anyone could do was attempt to rinse themselves off and stitch up the wounds. There was nothing anyone could do about the fact that some were determined to keep opening new ones. Especially not at Hope’s Peak – as far as everyone was concerned, Jin offered the students as much protection as he could give.

 Makoto just wished there was more. Not just on his side of things, but on the side of the Reserve Course students as well. He could have been in their shoes, had he not been so lucky. Hell, he probably would have been one of the students even further on the outside, who couldn’t even breathe the same air as a Hope’s Peak student. If they wanted to send him there on money alone, one of them would have had to fork over a kidney to the black market just to get enough. His family was not financially stable enough for that, and he felt certain that many of the Reserve Course kids were not that financially stable either. Yet there they were, clamouring even as the sun began to drift off to sleep. He wished they would, too. At the very least, he took comfort in the fact that their numbers were dwindling for the day.

 “They look so small down there.”

 Kyoko’s voice was flatter than soda in the sun. If he didn’t know her as well as he did, he might have thought her uninvested in the situation.

 “They do.” He muttered; his gaze fixed on a pair of boys picking a fight with the head of security. The sight of their shouting and waving their fists made him cringe. Juzo Sakakura was an alumnus of Hope’s Peak; the Super High School Level Boxer to be more specific. Not exactly the kind of man that anyone should want to mess with, especially on account of his hot temper. Pity stirred within him when he thought about how this would end. “Sakakura-san will crush them like small bugs, too.”

 She nodded curtly. “They should know better than to mess with him. He and the others have beaten up more than their fair share of Reserve Course students already.”

 Makoto bit his lip, wishing he had it within himself to do something. He was a small fish in a big pond. What could he possibly do? There was no control to be had over this situation, and yet he craved it.

 “I don’t know what they think that’s going to accomplish.”

 “Well, my understanding is that they think this will earn them some sort of equality or change, but so far their attempts haven’t born fruit-”

 “No,” he cut in, surprised even by his own interruption, “That’s not what I meant.”

 She blinked at him; her expression unchanging. Not even a twitch of the eyebrow or the lip to tell him what she was thinking. The girl was somewhere beyond neutral at this point, but she didn’t seem keen on showing it. “What did you mean, then?”

 “I don’t understand why the school hasn’t given in or tried to fix things. I’m surprised the police haven’t gotten involved,” heart thundering in his head, he continued, “Do you know if the school’s paying them hush money, or something?”

 Ah. A frown etched itself into her face within a matter of seconds, clearly the product of dredged up memories. So there was a little bit of emotion hiding behind that iron mask. Her father had had a case for her a few weeks back, after all. Though she refused to share many details, what she did tell him was that he suspended the case rather abruptly. He even went as far as saying that he “wasn’t satisfied with her work”. Her eyes had been glassy when she told him that. Keeping himself from pulling her into his arms had been more difficult than one might have expected.

 “I haven’t spoken to my father since the case.” Her eyebrows knitted themselves together as she glared at the students below. “Nor do I have any desire to speak to him again about much of anything.”

 Makoto could think to do nothing else but nod. “I don’t blame you. You were pretty upset after the whole thing.”

 “Should I not have been?” Her arms folded across her chest. “It was as if he gave me the case just to humiliate me by taking it away later. Not that it matters anyway. He doesn’t really care about the investigation. The one thing I know for certain is that he doesn’t care as much about the Steering Committee as he pretends he does.”

 Why would he not do something if that were the case? Was he honestly just sitting around twiddling his thumbs? He definitely tried not to make his impressions on people he didn’t know based on what others told him, but this seemed a little too suspicious to swallow.

 “What do you mean?” He dared to ask, shuffling slightly closer to her. Her refusal to meet his gaze remained rather blatant, but her face relaxed slowly.

 “He has little impact on the school overall,” she sighed, tucking a strand of hair back into place, “Jin Kirigiri is Hope’s Peak headmaster in title more than anything. They attempt to take his ideas into account, but he is a figurehead first and foremost.”

 “So he can’t do anything about the protests?”

 Kyoko shrugged. “He probably has been trying to, but the committee will not allow him that privilege.”

 His fingers gripped at his hoodie sleeves, as if to beg him to ground them in some way. If it weren’t for the cool air brushing delicately against his face, he might have thought himself to be in a movie scene. If Kyoko’s father really was doing all that he could, what chance did they have against the world? Things were already so close to falling off the edge into a chasm of desolation, and now nobody could do anything? The phantom sensation of a fist squeezed his throat. Part of him ached to reach his hand out to take hold of Kyoko’s own, feeling the smooth leather of her gloves against the palms of his hands. Would it be appropriate? She did still look pretty mad, but… god, he wanted to feel like everything around him was real for once. Throughout all of this chaos, she was one of a few things that reminded him that things were not as bad as he thought them to be.

 Shutting his eyes, he turned away from the scene. A few steps away from the rooftop’s chained fence managed to soothe his nerves within mere seconds. It somehow caught Kyoko’s attention, too.

 “I… I can’t watch them anymore.” He answered to the question she didn’t ask. Watching the Reserve Course students scream at shout like that is what they did all day in class and all day after. God, they needed a break from it. Regret stirred within him any time he drew himself back to the simpler days, when he took things like getting boba tea with Sayaka or rough housing with Mondo and Taka for granted. He’d give anything to go home and sit with his mom, and listen to those incredibly annoying women blather through their talk show. He missed the brief period of time in which his dad had begun to teach him how to drive, and the two would squabble over the controls and road safety. He even missed fighting with Komaru over who would get the TV on a Friday night, inducing many groans of frustrations from their parents. When all of these people were suffering, he knew was wrong to want it back, but… How could he not? Makoto’s heart was much too soft to comfortably look on as others suffered.

 The clacking of Kyoko’s high-heeled boots against the stone tiles of the roof signalled to him that she, too, had found it easier to turn away. “I can understand that. I don’t fancy watching them either.”

 “Kirigiri-san, could we…” To this surprise, his voice sounded like it was breaking. “Could we talk about something else? Something other than… whatever this is?”

 The clacking echoed closer as she moved to stand at his side; her hand found a soothing spot on his shoulder. One simple movement, and relief crashed over him in a waterfall. Warmth spread through his chest and for one moment, he felt completely safe. After so many weeks of fear and struggling, he finally remembered the sensation. His grandmother used to say that that was how you knew you loved someone. If you could find comfort in their touch during your darkest times. He definitely had it bad for Kyoko Kirigiri. The lovesickness, as his grandfather might say.

 “Is there something you want to talk about?” She spoke in a voice that felt like he was running his hand along a fleece blanket, taking in all of its softness. She tilted her body forward to try and get a good look at his face.

 A small smile tugged at his lips as he watched her out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t stop himself from turning to meet her. “Anything, really. Preferably something happy.”

 “Happy, hmm?” She tapped her chin, pursing her lips slightly. It was rare that one actually got to see the cogs turning in Kyoko’s mind, but it was always a sight to behold. “Umm… Sweden has a rabbit show all about jumping? I heard about it when my grandfather and I were there on a case when I was a girl. I think it might have been called Kaninhoppning?”

 Makoto laughed, shaking his head. “That’s adorable.”

 “It really is. Come to think of it, I have many happy memories from that trip… Although I never did get to see Kaninhoppning, I did manage to slip out onto our hotel room balcony for a half an hour to catch the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen.”

 Having the chance to slip away from her grandfather on those trips was a rare occurrence, that he knew well. Though Makoto had never met Kyoko’s grandfather, he couldn’t say that he felt like he would particularly like the man. The manner in which he treated Kyoko as she grew felt strange to him, in the least. She even confessed to being connected to him more by blood than by love, much to Makoto’s shock.

 “What did it look like?”

 It became Kyoko’s turn to smile as she turned her head to the sky, extending a gloved hand to point at the atmosphere spread above them. “A lot like this one, I found. A smattering of colours.”

 He followed suit, breathing in a calming breath as his eyes found a familiar sky. Puffs of pink and oranges sailed across the surface of blue like mystical ships in a vast ocean; sunlight breaking through like the heavens smiling down on them. Almost like proof that someone was still sitting up there, waiting to give this sign.

 “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

 She nodded, stepping closer to him and sliding her hand to his other shoulder. Oh god, she put her arm around him?! That made his heartbeat skip. He prayed his face hadn’t turned fire truck red. She would most definitely resort to teasing him if she caught wind of his embarrassment. Apart of him wonder if she could sense it, for only a few seconds later she tilted her head as if to rest on his shoulder. Rather than leave her there by herself, he moved his own to meet it.

 “It is rather special, I agree,” she answered him with a smile, “Dare I say it, this is perhaps even more special than the one during my travels.”

 God. That skin of his had definitely flushed red by now. It was a battle to avoid stuttering while he spoke, and a fight he lost easily. “R-Really? What m-makes this so special?”

 Kyoko shrugged her shoulders; her voice pouring from her mouth like smooth molasses. “I’m here with you.”

 Butterflies began to beat around his stomach the moment the words fell from her lips. Ack! Don’t think about her lips, he commanded himself internally. The last thing he needed was thinking about kissing those soft, full lips… a pair so perfectly rose in colour and that probably would feel so sweet against his own… Aah! No kissing, no kissing! She wanted to try and be his friend, and he was worrying about kissing. He should have been worried about thinking what to say. Could she tell that he was thinking about that?

 A quick glance at her out of the corner of his eye told him no; Kyoko Kirigiri was not a mind reader. Very adept at reading body language, but she could not telepathically tell that someone was thinking about kissing her. However, he had to admit that she could definitely tell that he was nervous. So much so that she started to apologize.

 “Sorry,” she muttered, darting her gaze to the floor, “I hadn’t mean to embarrass you.”

 He waved his hands around frantically. “No, no! I’m not embarrassed, you just… caught me off-guard, that’s all. I like hearing you say stuff like that. You’re a lot more sentimental than you let on.”

 The detective bit her lip awkwardly, doing her best to act like her face was not slowly growing poppy-red. The sight of her made him have to fight to suppress a few giggles. She has no right to be this cute, he thought with amusement. Even stereotypically cute girls like Sayaka couldn’t rival the sheer adorability of his Kyoko.

 “I’ve never really thought about myself like that… Would you consider it a good thing?”

 Makoto laughed and nuzzled her shoulder affectionately. “It’s a great thing. In fact, it’s something I like about you.”

 “I like that about you too,” she murmured, her voice cracking as she continued, “Your sentimentality, I mean. Not mine, that would be… that would be strange, wouldn’t it?”

 Oh, how the tables had turned. Now Kyoko was the one standing there, totally embarrassed. Though it had been him only for a moment earlier, he wondered if it were wrong to relish it. Seeing Kyoko flustered was as rare as Shikoku’s glowing mushroom forests; one could barely help wanting to take in all of the charm.

 “It would be, yeah,” he laughed, “I’m glad you like that about me, though. In fact, I’d like to ask you something about it.”

 Kyoko nodded ever so slightly, careful not to hurt either of their heads with the movement. “Of course.”

 “Kirigiri-san, would you promise me something?”

 “As long as it’s not to help you cover up a murder, most certainly.”

 He laughed. Ever blunt, as always. “No, nothing like that. I just… I want you to promise me that no matter what happens next, that you and I will always be there to support each other. Could you do that for me?”

 Though he expected a moment of hesitation, he was met with none. Only a smile greeted him alongside her words. “I’m surprised that you felt as if you had to ask. I would do that for you in a heart beat.”

 Makoto pressed his cheek further into her shoulder. “I never doubted you.”

[pastelsandpining]

The Master Sword

Summary: This is my take on memory 18, because the game’s version was far too happy for me. Zelda’s trip to Korok Forest was no easy feat, but she knew the sacred blade needed to return lest they lose it too.

Words: 2671 Warnings: this is Zelda after her entire kingdom was destroyed and all of her friends were slaughtered. it’s gonna deal with grief, survivor’s guilt, and other heavy themes.

CEO of posting works at midnight then being sad about the lack of notes

Masterlist

~~~~

Exhaustion was heavier than the sword strapped to her back.

Her legs screamed for her to slow down and her lungs burned from the ash in the air, inhaled in gulps as she wrestled with the grief in her chest. 

This morning, a beautiful sunrise greeted her from her window. Birds sang a song of love from their perch, and people bustled along the streets of Castle Town. She had a piece of her favorite dessert brought to her by her knight as a gift, and she walked through her lively, wonderous kingdom covered by green grass and wildlife beyond compare, to meet with her friends and conduct a day of prayer at the Spring of Wisdom.

It was a day just like any other, birthday or not. 

And now, that green grass was burning. That cerulean blue sky was painted red with clouds of ash raining down from every last bit of civilization she could see. The wildlife scattered, if there were any left at all. The fields of flowers were trampled by ancient technology that had gone from astonishing to terrifying—and out of their control.

She did not need Nayru’s wisdom to know that everyone from the castle, her home, to the outskirts of Central Hyrule had perished. She knew nothing of her friends, trapped within their once loyal machines, but she could not imagine they’d met a better fate.

And Link.

Zelda took a deep, shuddering breath and held tighter to the Champion’s Tunic that once matched his eyes. Now, it was covered in dirt and grime and stained with his blood. She wasn’t aware of the exact time, but she figured it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since Hyrule’s hero had died in her arms. She didn’t allow herself any time to grieve—she couldn’t. 

Her despair reached far beyond the point of tears anyway.

She wiped at her eyes with her wrists, which managed hardly anything more than smearing the dirt on her face, and tried to even out her breathing as she reached Kakariko. Only then did she lower her pace and she didn’t have to search far for Impa, who was giving orders to her warriors. 

“Princess?”

Zelda pushed the tunic towards her dear friend and trusted it would say what her voice couldn’t. Some naive, stupid part of her hoped that if she didn’t speak it aloud, then it wasn’t set in stone.

“I can’t stay for much longer,” she explained, forcing her voice steady. “Two Sheikah have taken Link to the Shrine of Resurrection. When he returns, please, give him this.”

“How long-“

“As long as it takes.” 

In truth, she had no real reason to believe the shrine would work. Every last piece of Sheikah technology they’d entrusted was corrupted and turned against them. If the Calamity had that sort of power, then it was probable it could do the same to their last piece of hope. She prayed that wouldn’t be the case, because she didn’t want to think about what would become of Link, or his body, if something went wrong. 

“The sword,” Impa said, her eyes locked where the hilt peaked out from her shoulder. 

“I hope to return it to the forest, so that when he is ready, he can retrieve it,” Zelda explained, fidgeting with the strap. 

“And then..? What will you do, Princess?”

“Tell him that he must free the Divine Beasts if there is any hope of winning this.”

Impa’s face betrayed that she knew and Zelda turned away so she did not have to see the desperation on her loyal friend’s face.

“You can’t,” the Sheikah whispered. “We have no way of knowing— If the shrine does work, it could be years before Link is ready to face the Calamity again! No one can fight for that long, much less alone!”

“Stop,” commanded the princess. Her eyes traced the three golden triangles burned into the back of her hand and she closed it into a fist. “My entire purpose is to fight this Calamity. I refuse to do nothing when finally this power obeys me. Enough have died tonight.”

Her tone made it clear there was no hope in arguing. Her decision was final.

“Do you think.. Can we win this?” Impa asked instead with an awkward shift. She’d asked herself that same question many times within the last few hours and she wished that she could provide a complete answer. 

“I believe in Link,” she replied firmly, as if daring him to truly die on her. “Tell him that as well.”

Zelda had taken perhaps three steps forwards when Impa spoke again.

“Will you come back?”

“...you must do everything you can to aid him, Impa. Promise me that.”

“I promise.”

She couldn’t stand to waste more time, so she didn’t allow for any more questions. With a nod of appreciation to her friend, one that also served as a silent thank you and goodbye, Zelda broke into a sprint and didn’t stop until she was out of the village borders. Extreme physical activity was not of her forte and she’d done plenty of running already. Every bit of muscle in her legs protested against it. With an unspoken apology to everyone she had failed, she stopped trying to push herself.

She would need all of her strength. 

The strap was digging into her shoulder. Zelda slung the scabbard off of her back and chose to hold it in her hands instead. 

How many times had she looked up, seen him with this very sword on his back, and loathed it? How many times had she seen the blue metal glinting in the sun, the golden triangles crafted with such precious precision, and felt defeated?

Zelda could laugh. Defeat surrounded her and it was far heavier than her tantrums. It was even heavier than the steel in her grasp. She found it ironic, yet heavily fitting, that she would be the one to carry the blade she once detested to its resting place, that she would be the one to hold its wielder as he died, when she once loathed him so, that she, the one who could not fulfill her role, would be the sole survivor left to fight the Calamity. 

She wondered briefly, stumbling over a rock, or maybe her own exhaustion, whether or not they had made it to the Shrine. Did they lay his body to rest? Could they see his wounds healing? Was it slower than that, or was it just a futile attempt of grasping at straws?

A nearby screech startled her. Without much thought for what she was doing, she’d unsheathed the Master Sword and, with both hands on the blade, swung with all the might she had left. The Bokoblin fell before her without another sound, but the momentum of the swing kept her moving until she, too, was doubled over. The sword, with its tip driven into the dirt, was her only crutch. 

How Link was ever able to swing something so heavy with such ease baffled her. Or perhaps it was just because her hands were clumsy with weapons of any sort.

Zelda pushed herself upright and picked the scabbard up from the ground. With a little difficulty, she slid the sword back into its holder and continued her trek towards the forest.

It was hard to ignore the burning fields all around her. It was hard to ignore the guardians soaring overhead. She was careful to avoid their search beams because she didn’t think she could spare any of the sealing power for them. 

Part of her felt for them. She knew they were machines—no more than hunks of metal on legs, but there was tragedy surrounding them. Pieces of technology that were so advanced, that she loved, that were created with the sole purpose of helping Hyrule, were abandoned as soon as the Calamity was sealed. Their creators were exiled, their kind were banned, and they, too, were lost to the sea of time. Buried and forgotten, until they were needed again. And as fate would so cruelly have it, they were twisted and corrupted and now knew nothing but destruction.

Her thoughts flickered back to her loyal knight and she realized with a stroke of horror that he, too, would be buried and forgotten, lost to a sea of time. But then again, so would she. That’s how it went, wasn’t it? A hero and a goddess, set to revive only when the Calamity would. With tens of thousands of years passing between them, all they would truly become were stories. Except, there would be no grand legend following them. For a story to exist, there had to be people to tell it. Her kingdom, as far as the eye could see, had very little left.

She wanted to be upset. She wanted to be angry at this cursed fate, but if she refused to play her part in this elaborate game of chess, then there would be no hope for a future Hyrule to recall stories to.

Zelda gripped the scabbard tighter and pushed onwards. She never knew how much she would come to miss having his eyes on her back—having him three paces behind her at all times. She felt incredibly, strangely alone, and there was no comforting thought that one day she would feel his presence again. Wisdom did not grant knowledge of the future, so she was not naive enough to try manifesting her desire.

There was no bringing him back, not yet, and all the other lives lost tonight, all of their friends who’d stood bravely together only to die alone, had no chance of returning whatsoever.

All she could really do was hope that she could give the remaining populations in every last corner of Hyrule a chance to evacuate while she held the Calamity back. Should it devour her, her entire kingdom, at least her people would be safe. 

Goddesses, every step felt more difficult. Every step she took forward was a missing step behind her. And she couldn’t help wondering,

could she have saved him?

Part of her wanted to believe it would have been possible. The other part of her knew better than to tempt fate. They could not change it, but fate itself could play with whatever rules it desired. 

This, she realized with a deep chill, was how it’d always been meant to go. All of the time she spent in the springs, crying for a silent goddess to answer, wouldn’t have changed a thing. Fate was cruel.

Yet she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with the goddesses. The realization, the clarity that fell upon her, washed her through with a sudden calm. 

Or perhaps that feeling stemmed from the Lost Woods, whose fog seemed to be parting for her. With the sacred blade in her hands and the goddess in her blood, she supposed it had no reason to disorient and disable her. Even the trees were silent as she passed, their eyes following her as if they were waiting for a cue. 

Korok Forest looked as if it were from an alien world. The bright and lively green of the trees and pigment of the flowers did not match the decay outside of them. But even here, in the most sacred grove in all of Hyrule, the Calamity had a reach. She could see the dark, crimson sky behind the leaves of cherry blossoms where it did not belong. 

Zelda mistepped, her foot hitting the raised platform, and she didn’t try to catch her fall. The sword’s clang was loud as it hit the stone and her arms trembled under her weight. Her knees were scraped through the dress but it was already stained with blood, what was a little more? The sting was nothing compared to the loss of her kingdom. 

“All hope is not lost.”

She lifted her head, but it was hard to see the Great Deku Tree through the blur of tears in her vision. She blinked hard, but it did little to help. 

“With all due respect, I don’t think I can handle much positivity,” she replied, ducking her head again so she didn’t have to look at him. 

“There is no fault in that. However, telling you that there is nothing left would be false.”

“They’re dead,” she said and shook her head. How did she still have tears to cry? “All of them.”

“Not all of them. But you already know that.”

Zelda wiped at her eyes with her fist and dug her nails into her palms to keep from slamming them on the pedestal. 

“It hurts,” was all she could manage. 

“Yes,” replied the Deku Tree with a gentle hum. “But what is grief, if not love persevering?”

She did not want to reply. Instead, she turned her focus to steadying her breathing and putting an end to the ever flowing tears. The Calamity had laid waste to her kingdom, what good would crying do? Her clumsy hands found the hilt of the sacred blade and she pulled it closer. 

“You master will come for you,” she promised quietly. “Until then you shall rest safely here.”

But what good was her promise when she didn’t know if the shrine would work, or if Link would still be Link if it did? Could the soul of a hero strong enough to surpass lifetimes be altered, shaped into something unrecognizable? If such were the case..,

“Please,” she begged, holding her hands tighter, though she didn’t know if she was saying it to Link or to the sword. “Trust me when I say that I know he will arrive before you yet again.”

Zelda gripped the sword again and struggled back onto shaky legs. When she was steady, she slid the sword back into the pedestal and pressed down firmly until she felt it stick. There was a rush of something too, an odd sort of warmth that hit her fingers and spread throughout her chest as if it was trying to say something. This, she thought, must be what courage feels like.

“If I may be so bold,” the Deku Tree began again, “what is it that you are planning to do next, Princess?”

“It seems that my role is unfinished,” she replied, giving her eyes a final wipe. “There is still something I must do.”

“I sense there is great strength in your dedication.”

Yes, perhaps there was. She wondered if this is how Link had felt nearly every day—ready to act upon a moment’s notice. Even in his absence, she could feel a piece of him resonating within her heart. 

“Great Deku Tree, I ask of you,” she spoke in the comfort and confines of the forest, where no one could repeat her words, “when he returns, can you please relay this message..? Tell him I-“

“Now then… words for him would sound much better in the tones of your voice, don’t you think?”

The guardian spirit, old and wise as the sacred blade itself, gazed down at her with a warm look of faith. There was a gentle breeze that ruffled her hair and a ray of sunshine peaked through the grotesque sky for only a moment, but it was enough to bring a tiny smile to her lips despite it all. 

“Yes,” she decided simply.

This was courage.

The heavy fog of the forest parted for her just as it had done before and the gloomy, burning world she’d escaped welcomed her back as if she’d never left. The exhaustion was gone and in its absence remained a hostile anger that she was ready to let go of. Years upon years of neglect, of training, of hardships, led her to this exact moment—walking into an impossible fight alone. It wasn’t fair, goddesses knew that. This thing had taken everything from her.

But if her kingdom had fallen and she was destined to follow, she would make certain that she took the Calamity with her.

[marshmallow-phd]

The Anormic

Part of The Experiments Universe

Genre: Lucky One/Obsession AU

Pairing: Kris x Reader

Summary: You were everything he needed to feel human. But not even your presence could keep the nightmares away. The years had gone by and it seemed his dreams were all that was left of his trauma. When his past comes back and snatches you away, the human mask he’d worked so hard to create will be ripped away and he’ll stop at nothing to get you back.

Part: 1 I 2 I 3

**

Dozens of papers were scattered all over the floor. Anyone would have glanced at the chaos and assumed there was no order to it. But there was a reason to the rhyme. You could reach out and pluck up the exact file you were looking for without having to search too long. The fact that you were the only one who understood the order was fine by you. They were all spread out in a semi-circle within easy distance. A worn-out notebook balanced on your knee. The pencil between your fingers bounced up and down in a blur as your eyes scanned over your notes. Scribbles and half-words covered almost the entire space, cutting across the blue lines diagonally and filling in the margins like your own secret code. There were still too many missing pieces, too many avenues to explore. You’re inexperience was getting in your own way.

With a sigh hanging in the air, you leaned back to lie on the floor. You looked over at the digital green numbers glowing from the clock on the stove. The day was slowly shifting into night. To your left, purples and oranges mixed in the clouds out the window in a way that only nature could. Those two colors anywhere else would have been gaudy, but in the sky, they were breathtaking. But they also weren’t the sight you wanted at the moment.

You knew Kris was currently meeting up with his friend, Tao, so you weren’t worried for him – merely anxious for him to get home. The day didn’t sit quite right if you went to bed before seeing his smile. You didn’t know much about the younger man, only that he was in the same orphanage as Kris growing up and his past was just as mysterious. But he made Kris happy, lighter in a way that you weren’t able to. Perhaps it was due to their shared history. It didn’t keep the twinge of jealous away, but you’d learned to manage it. As long as Kris had someone to talk to ab-

Click.

The soft noise made you sit up. It was the kind you were too used to hearing. Kris would often try to sneak in through the front door so you wouldn’t get distracted in the middle of studying. His well-meaning intention did the opposite, making you more in tuned to the sound. Standing to your feet, you shuffled through the living room towards the door. “Kris?” Nothing. You called out again.

Gloved hands reached out from the kitchen entrance and pulled you back. Your mouth was covered by the protective nylon, preventing you from screaming out for help, but you could still kick and flail. Whoever had a hold of you must not have been prepared for the fight back. Or you were simply able to hit just the right spot to make his grip loosen enough for you to get away. In a quick glance, you saw a total of three armored men in your apartment. The odds of you making it away were slim. That didn’t mean you weren’t going to try.

You ran for the living room. All three were right behind you. The advantage was yours, however, since you knew the layout and the arrangement of the furniture. Jumping over the couch that separated the living room and dining area, you headed for the bookshelf. Not knowing where the instinct came from, you tipped the shelf over. The heavy wood landed with a hard thud, vibrating the floor and rattling the glassware that was drying in the sink. It did its job, though, and covered the papers that were spread out on the floor. If men were coming to kidnap you, there was a very real possibility that your research could be the reason why. You never were able to keep your nose out of things. The sudden furniture in the middle of the floor was enough to stop the men in their tracks and give you time to run for the window. Your nervous fingers fumbled with the lock, but the sides were sticking. The window didn’t fly open to let you out onto the fire escape. It had only managed to crack open a few inches when you were yanked backwards. The hands that had grabbed you tossed you through the air. You landed on your back on the glass coffee table, shattering the panel that held your mug and textbooks. The wooden cross legs in the middle cradled your fall and kept you from rolling in the shards that now covered the rug. You groaned and whimpered from the pain as the men stood around you. They covered their faces with cloth before one held up a black aerosol can and sprayed a white mist into your face. You fought hard to hold your breath and not let the chemical into your lungs, but too soon your will gave out. One deep breath was all it took and you were out.

**

Kris kept his head down as he hurried through the streets. The hood kept most of his face covered, but he still couldn’t risk being seen by any cameras nearby. From his time undercover at EXO, he knew they had no qualms about breaking the law and hacking any security footage that might benefit them. The bus ride had been long, but this had to be the place where he started; back at the beginning. His stomach churned the closer his feet took him. Memories danced around in his head, taunting him. Now that you were gone, taken by the very past he was trying to outrun, the parts of himself that he’d been able to repress were coming back with a vengeance.

The old headquarters of EXO was now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Bits of wall still stood here and there, covered in weeds and leaves, surrounded by a mix of dirt and glass. The people around here had wanted the remains emptied out and the lot flattened, but EXO refused and they couldn’t be forced to do so. Stepping over the knee-high rod iron fence, Kris checked his surroundings once again before venturing in deeper. As far as he was aware, there wasn’t too much monitoring of the area, though that didn’t mean it was nonexistent. He knew very well that he might have tripped some sort of motion sensor, alerting the rebranded company to an unauthorized presence on their property. If he hadn’t already been spotted then he should have time to search before anyone else showed up. Getting captured himself was certainly not the answer to getting you back. As long as he kept his face from being seen, he should have an advantage.

Careful with every step he took, he glanced sparingly around the area. However, the one place he should have been looking was near his own feet. An old cracked pipe covered in red-brown rust laid sneakily in the overgrown grass that had managed to break through the concrete floor. Kris hit the ground hard on his knees, palms scraping against the rough surface. Shaking the pain from his hands, he hissed as he inspected the damage. It took less than a minute for the skin to knit itself back together until only dirt and rocks the size a pinhead remained.

“You need to be careful.”

Kris’ head snapped up, whirling around to find the source of the voice that was so close to yours. But there was no one in the vicinity. Not even a kid on a skateboard or old woman walking her dogs. Of course. It was a memory. One of many where you almost discovered his secret.

“I’ll be fine,” Kris had scoffed with a roll of his eyes. The two of you had escaped for the day to a small lake about an hour out of town. The sun was lowering in the sky, stars that you couldn’t see in the city making a rare appearance. A small fire danced and flickered while the two of you skewered marshmallows onto metal kebab rods. You were being the smart one and wrapping a cloth on the end as you held it over the blaze. Kris, preferring it a little more on the burnt side while also being a tad lazy, simply set the marshmallow into the fire and let it sit there while he fixed the blankets a few feet away.

“I wish we could do this all the time,” you sighed, bobbing the stick up and down to keep it out of the flames. Wind ruffled the hem of your flannel shirt. Actually, it might have been one of Kris’ shirts that you commandeered. Not that he would ever complain.

“If you want to come out here more often, just say the word.” There was nothing that he would deny you – except for the truth about himself.

You shook your head. “No, because then I’ll never want to leave.”

Coming up behind you, Kris wrapped his arms around your shoulders. He rested his chin near the crook of your neck and took in the scent of you mixed with the smoke that drifted through the air. He wished that the two of you could stay out here as well – hide out in the woods where no one could find you and you would always be safe. Time would no longer exist out here. Only the sun would indicate the passage of the days. Nothing was more free than space and isolation. Perhaps he could build a cabin, a simple, humble home big enough for the two of you and anyone else who might come along.

A giggle interrupted the romantic moment. “Your marshmallow is burning.”

Cursing, Kris jumped towards the fire and pulled the rod out. Big mistake. The heat from the fire had transferred all the way up the metal, burning his hand. Kris dropped the rod in the dirt as he cried out from the burning of his palm. You put your own stick to the side as you reached for his hand. “Are you okay?”

Kris kept his hand squeezed tight. The pain from his throbbing skin made him want to hiss and scream, but he held it in. “I’m fine.”

“Let me see it.” You tried to pry open his fingers, but he fought against you. “Kris, seriously, you might be seriously burnt.”

“It’s not that bad.” He just needed a few seconds more….

You looked up at him with pleading eyes. “Kris, please.”

He gave in. Letting you open up his hand, he waited and hoped. He barely held back the sigh of relief when he uncurled his fingers. While his hand was still a little red, there was no sign of the previous injury. You relaxed into your own sense of relief was well. “I guess you didn’t have ahold of it that long. That’s good.” You looked over at the ruined s’more lying in the sand. “I guess you’ll have to start over. But, please, this time use a bandana or something.”

He smiled broadly at you and kissed your cheek. “I will.”

What he wouldn’t give to go back to that moment, to that time. He’d grant your wish and never leave that little spot off the lake where the water calmly splashed up on the shore, the pale sand felt soft against bare feet and the trees sang in the wind. It wasn’t the last time you came close to witnessing what his altered body was capable of. Kris had told himself that he would be more careful, more aware, but that was an empty promise. The fact that you were still in the dark was a miracle.

No, you were probably no longer oblivious to his otherness. As soon as you were able to, you would have been demanding answers. He wouldn’t put it past the scientists to spill every little secret, to turn you against him and make him even more vulnerable and pliable to their wishes. He just hoped that you would continue to trust him, to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him plead his own case to you.

The phone in his pocket vibrated. Frowning, Kris pulled it out with every intention of turning it off. But seeing Chanyeol’s name pop up made him hesitate. He shouldn’t answer. He should let it go to voicemail and call back later. He hit the green button. “Hello?”

“Hey, Kris!” Chanyeol’s voice was just as upbeat and joyful as ever.

“What is it, Chanyeol?” He didn’t mean to be short, but he couldn’t bring himself to fake cheerfulness right now.

The younger male could sense his enthusiasm was not being reciprocated. “Um, I know this might be sudden, but I was wondering if I could come visit for a few days? I have something I want to talk to you about and-”

“I can’t. I’m not home.”

“Oh.” Chanyeol’s voice was lower, gone was the earlier excitement. “Okay. When do you get back? Maybe-”

“I don’t know. I can’t do this right now.”

He hung up before he could feel anymore guilt. A few days ago, he would have gladly invited Chanyeol to come stay with him. The two of them were somewhat close, the other’s positive energy being infectious no matter how tired one was. You would have loved him.

Turning his phone off, Kris shoved the device back in his pocket and stood up to his feet. He kept going deeper into the rubble until he came to the spot he was looking for. Wiping away the years of growth, he found the inconspicuous hide away hole. He opened the flap to reveal a metal bar. One turn at forty-five degrees and he was able to open the rounded door in the ground. It was dark, to the point that Kris could barely make out the floor of the hidden room. From his bag, he pulled out a flash light and dropped down. His heart sank.

This was once a secret storage room, cabinets lining nearly every inch of the walls. And they were empty. Drawers hanging open or thrown to the floor like the secrets they held were taken in a hurry. When they had blown this place up years ago, Kris had assumed that this room had been destroyed as well. But it was still intact from he could tell.

They could have taken the files to Moo San’s mansion, he told himself. But a sinking feeling told him that wasn’t the case. They were all so convinced that they’d ended it that day; that all the information EXO had on the experiments they conducted, everything pertaining to them, had been destroyed in the fire. As the years went by, that conclusion began fact. But this empty room was telling him that they were wrong. He couldn’t know for sure, but a sinking feeling told him RS had at least part of the information. Were they looking for more? Was that why they took you? To see what you knew?

Turning off the flashlight, Kris climbed back up the hole, swiped up his bag and stalked away from the scene.

A few blocks away sat the community library. Cash on hand to pay for the minutes, Kris signed in under a fake name, giving a story to the librarian about how he’d lost his card but really needed to use the computer. She reluctantly gave him a guest sign in and pointed to the lab. Sitting as far away from the others in the room as possible, Kris opened up a search engine and typed in Regeneration Science. While he knew some things about the organization and their ties to EXO, he needed more. Expect it didn’t exist to the rest of the world. The only results were those of other labs trying to recreate in mammals the cell regeneration that reptiles possessed to someday use on humans. Okay, then. New tactic.

He typed in EXO Applied Sciences and scrolled through the old news stories about the fires, chuckling to himself as he passed a few forums discussing possible conspiracies behind the incidents. Then he found what he was looking for. The cut and paste website of the company. He searched through the different tabs, bypassing the flourishes of why the company was so great and what wonderful things they were doing for humanity. On the last page he found the list of individuals who owned parts of the company and the directors on the board. None of the names sounded familiar. Even some of the companies that sat as shareholders sounded foreign to him. Frustrated that the answer wasn’t popping out at him, he printed the list of owners along with prominent doctors that headed the different departments – none of which he’d ever interacted with in his time as a prisoner.

Exhausted, he made it back to the dingy motel. Collapsing on the edge of the bed, he pulled your charm that now hung from a red string out from underneath his shirt. The small bird sat in his palm. He told himself that he should have never met you, that you would have been better off never having met him. But he was selfish. He cherished the memories the two of you had created to ever completely regret it. He needed to get you back.

But he couldn’t do this on his own.

Pulling out his phone, he turned it back on. A little prayer went through his thoughts, a prayer that his brother would answer. After the short conversation that had occurred half an hour ago, Kris wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t answer. As the phone rang in his ear, he held his breath and hoped that he wasn’t on the verge of shattering more worlds than his own.

**

You weren’t sure how long you’d been awake. It had been a slow process, opening your eyes and taking in your foreign surroundings. The room was blindingly white, minimal furniture that wasn’t anywhere close to comfortable. Every wall was pure concrete giving you no indication of where you might be. Your muscles were sore. Each movement made your muscles groan as if they’d aged seventy years overnight. You had to take your time getting up off the thin mattress. The metal bedframe creaked from your shifting weight. Still dressed in your pajama shorts and cardigan, you shivered at the constant cold breeze that ran through the room though there didn’t seem to be a vent in sight. The only way out was a door on the far end of the room. A narrow, rectangular window about eye level rested slightly off to the size. At least that would be useful.

Your bare feet hit the tile floor, shooting another shiver up your spine. The slap of each step echoed around the room. Now that you were up and moving around, the room seemed much smaller than you initially thought. Peering out the window, you craned your neck to see as far down the hallway you could manage. In a single file line, strange looking men in equally odd clothing marched down the hall. While you couldn’t see all of their faces, you could have sworn some of them had two different colored eyes. Behind them, a woman dressed in regular clothes walked into view, nervousness written all over her face. She glanced over at you momentarily and frowned. A muffled shout caused her to flinch and she hurried to catch back up with the group.

A new man’s face appeared in the window. You jumped back at the sudden surprise, holding your breath as the door slid open. The man stepped inside. On his face sat a malevolent grin. Before you could open your mouth to demand answers, he beat you to the punch.

“You are currently being held in the underground facility of Regeneration Science, an extension of EXO Applied Sciences and Technologies. I am Dr. Brandt, head of the… experiments we perform down here.”

You frowned. EXO was a name you knew. The company had been in the news several years ago. Both their main headquarters and the owner’s mansion had burned down a few months apart, the owner dying in the latter tragedy. After that, nothing too special happened with them besides the occasional upgrade or technological breakthrough to make everyone’s lives easier on a daily basis. They were also one of the top medicinal companies in the world, only a few others standing in their way of being number one. They often came up in class, the two fires heatedly debated amongst your classmates. The conspiracy that the company set burned the buildings down themselves had never really died out, many thinking they were covering up something sinister. You’d never thought anything of it before. Now, though…

But you couldn’t figure out what any of that had to do with you. None of the projects you’d been researching had anything to do with EXO.

“What do you want with me?” The horrific thought that you were now going to become one of their experiments flashed through your mind. They couldn’t do that, force you to be exposed to whatever new drug or weapon they were working on.

Dr. Brandt smirked. “For you to sit tight right here and be a good girl.”

You scoffed. “You expect me to just go along with that?”

“Yes, I do,” he replied confidently. Hands behind his back, he took several steps toward you. Personal space was apparently not something he respected. “Especially if you want Kris to remain unharmed.”

You pounced. Hands twisted in the lab coat he wore, you pulled and shoved, your blood boiling under your skin. “What did you do to him?! Where is he?!” The door to the room slid open again as two guards ran into the room and pulled you away. They held on to your arms to keep you from attacking again. “I swear, if you’ve hurt him-”

“We haven’t touched a single hair on his head,” Dr. Brandt interrupted as he fixed his coat. “He was the one we were after last night, but he’s exceptionally difficult to track down. So my men went with plan b, which was to bring you in and, hopefully, lead Kris to turn himself in voluntarily.”

“What do you want with Kris?”

Dr. Brandt narrowed his eyes. “He hasn’t told you, has he?”

You swallowed. “Told me what?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure if that was noble or stupid. However, I am more than willing to fill in those particular details for you, if you so wish.” He raised an eyebrow, waiting for your answer.

There was no telling if you could trust a single word coming from this man’s mouth. For all you knew, he had nothing to do with EXO, this Regeneration Science didn’t exist, and he was playing you for a fool by dangling Kris in front of you. But you couldn’t deny the possibly poisoned candy. Kris had a mysterious past, you’d been aware of it since you first met. Sometimes, his stories or explanations didn’t add up. You knew he kept secrets. Those mysteries had been impossible not to investigate. So, you gave in.

“Tell me what you know.”

[dapandapod]

Hi, I have a Geraskier prompt for you. Jaskier jumps in front of a spell aimed at Geralt. Geralt yells at Jaskier. They have no clue what the spell did until they get to town and Jaskier loses his memory of Geralt (the spell erases the thing he loves most). As Jaskier has been gravely injured before, Geralt decides to let him go. Jaskier goes back to Oxenfurt but something keeps nagging at him. Geralt keeps an eye on him from afar until Jaskier gets in trouble and Geralt saves him

Hi my lovely anon! I love this and it might have turned into a bigger thing than I expected! Thank you so much for your prompt and I would love to hear from you again!

There will be a part two written soon! Because this is just the beginning!

It’s on Ao3! 

Edit: part two! Part three! Part four!

                                    ~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~

                                        Hollow - Part 1

There is a vibration in the air. A pulsing energy coming from the woman in front of them. Chaos gathering and redying to unleash itself upon them. She is anger and hurt and shuddering breaths and thunder and sadness. The hairs on Geralt's arms rise, her magic so palpable he can almost touch it. She is very strong, but untrained. She can bring the chaos to her, she can shape it and give it intent, and she can most likely kill this entire village. Geralt flexes his grip on the sword. He has to time this exactly right. He raises his other hand, ready to sign Aard if need be.

~

In the end he doesn’t time it right. The world screeches to a halt, everything is white, red, blurry, and then Jaskier is falling to his knees in front of Geralt. “No.” Geralt breathes. “No no no, Jaskier! I told you to stay back!” The woman in front of them laughs an empty laugh. “I am sorry, witcher. I meant it for them, for you, but maybe this is better.” Her smile is without malice, without life, without colour.She puts her face to the darkening sky, admiring the first eager starsp peeking out on the night sky. Her skin turns grey, and slowly she is ash in the wind.

“Let it hurt you like it hurt me.” Her shadow whispers and she is gone.

Geralt drops his sword and throws himself over Jaskiers still form. Panic crashes through his body, wave after wave hitting him. Jaskier, the fool, stepped in front of him. Protected him. Jaskier wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to stay with the other villagers, he was supposed to be safe.

His mouth tastes like iron, bile, smoke, it is so dry he can barely talk nor pray to anything, anyone who might hear him. “Jaskier, I am so sorry, please please, Jaskier…” A month. It was a month since the last time Jaskier was in danger because of him. Became hurt because of him. Slowly he turns Jaskier over so Geralt can see his face. There is no visible damage, and it makes Geralt's heart plummet. Physical hurts he can deal with, treat, clean, bandage. Magical hurts however are infinitely more complicated. Jaskier makes a small groan, eyes fluttering, when Geralt propps him up in his arms. Behind them he can hear the village open their doors, looking out at what is happening. “Is she gone?” Someone calls out to them. Geralt can’t answer. Jaskier is so pale, sweat appearing by his hairline. “Healer!” Geralt finally shouts over his shoulder. “Bring me your healer!”

There are rushing steps and then someone sits down by his side. A woman with a long braid and an apron puts her hand to Jaskiers face, to his body. She takes his pulse, smells his breath, looking at his pupils. Poking, prodding, pulling at clothes hunting for wounds or bruises. The bard's pale skin is unhurt, except the still healing scar on the side of his stomach. The healer gives Geralt a sideyed look, stern, and keeps examining him. Geralt knows. He blames himself for that one too.

“He will live.” She announces after a surprisingly short time, sitting back. “There is nothing physically wrong with him. The rest we will know when he wakes up.” The healer gets up, pats Geralt on the shoulder and moves back to the village. Nobody else dared come to them, but he can sense their eyes on his back. No matter. Geralt must take Jaskier to the inn, to their room, to safety, away from prying eyes. Carefully, with as much gentleness as he can muster, he picks up his bard and carries him close to his chest. Every breath expanding Jaskiers chest against his own is a small blessing.

~

There is no sleep. No meditation. There is only watching over his friend, his companion, his one truth for all these years. He put Jaskier in one of the beds. The bard has yet to wake up, so he tucks the blanket around his limp body. Then Geralt waits. Head in his hands, ears straining to hear every heartbeat, the armor still on his body, Geralt sits by Jaskiers bedside on a very rickety footstool. At some point he has to stretch, and he sit down on his own bed instead.

He hates contracts like this. He knew something wasn’t right, knew it the moment he stepped into her hut. She mourned, her eyes rimmed with red. The villagers wanted her dead, had claimed her a beast when a man died. Geralt don’t kill people. When they talked to her, Jaskiers words a balm on her hurt, they learned how they mistreated her. Abused her. Everybody but the man who died. “He was the one thing I loved, and they took it from me.”

It became clear she was after vengeance. Geralt doesn’t kill people, but he can't let her harm them. He can’t let her become him. He would stand between them, protect them from each other.

And Jaskier took the hit for it. Caring, loving, forgiving Jaskier, who never knows when to do what he has been told.

~

Sometime during the night he must have slumbered. That, or he didn’t notice the time passing. The stars hide behind the clouds, the sun slowly crawling out and tainting the sky with harsh reds and yellows.

The first rays of the morning sun find its way through the window. Jaskier stirs and Geralt's heart almost stops. When he looks up he sees the bard stretch his arms above his head, blinking his eyes open.

“Oh.” Jaskier says. “uhm...Good morning. Where am I?” Geralt exhales, a breath he has been holding since the moment Jaskier crumpled to the ground. “At the inn. You got hurt last night because of me. Again.” Geralt says, bitterness heavy in his voice. Jaskiers face is carefully blank as he studies the witcher. “Oh.” Is all he says again. It feels… wrong. Something is off. By now Jaskier would have told Geralt three times over what an idiot he is and how he should stop worrying. But he says nothing.

The silence is heavy and Geralt is very much not sure on what to do. Finally, he gets to his feet. When he does, Jaskier pulls his blanket up a little higher. There is an odd smell in the room now, one he can’t exactly place. Geralt frowns, and finally walks over to the door. “I’ll go fetch the healer.” he says, feeling awkward. Has the time finally come for Jaskier to blame him? Jaskier just nods. When no other reactions, words come from his friend, Geralt walks out. Hopefully the healer will know what is wrong.

~

“He doesn’t know you.” The healer says when she exits the room. Geralt had per request waited outside when she looked over Jaskier. It stung, but he accepted it. But this… “What does that mean?” Geralt asks, frown deepening. He still hasn't gotten out of his armor. He stands there looming over her but feeling like the smallest person in the world. “It means he has no memory of you, doesn’t know who you are or why he is here.” She says, voice cold. “I… but… is he hurt?” He asks her, but the healer shakes her head. “No. The magic must have altered his memories, I'm not sure to what extent, but he is otherwise fine.” They stand in silence for a while. Geralt pondering what to do, how to help, she just studying him.

“Witcher, I am going to be frank with you.” She says finally. “I think you should let him go. He is not safe with you.” “That is not your decision to make.” “No, it’s not. But you know it’s true. People never survive around your kind for long.” She says it with such disdain, such cold eyes. “We will leave when he is ready.” He says, trying to control himself, his anger. He walks past her and into their room. How does she fucking dare.

He close the door behind him, seething. Jaskier stands with his back to the door, pants loose on his hips, putting his shirt back on. Geralt just stands there, watching him. Jaskier notices him and suddenly that smell is back. Oh.

Geralt didn’t understand what it was, because it was never a smell he ever associated with Jaskier. Fear. It breaks Geralt's heart a thousand times over. Jaskier truly does not remember him. “Sorry.” He mumbles. “How are you feeling?” Geralt doesn't know where to look, because this is his fault. All of it.

Jaskier looks at him, face blank but eyes wary. With slow movements he stuffs his shirt in his pants. “Im fine.” Geralt moves over to his bed, sits down on the covers. “You really don’t remember me?” Geralt asks, and he knows, he knows, but he can’t help but torture himself. Jaskier cocks his head. “I really don’t, I'm afraid. Do we know each other?” Jaskier gives him a careful smile.

There is a whirlwind in Geralt's head. The years they spent together. Summer nights in front of the fire, Jaskier gently playing his lute and Geralt caring for his swords. Quiet mornings before a hunt, Jaskier fussing over his armor. Roach shoving at Jaskier when she can smell the treats he always keeps for her in his pockets. Yennefer and Jaskier bickering over their wine, Jaskiers constant river of words, the way he always, always steps in front of Geralt when all Geralt wants is to keep him safe. How can he keep Jaskier safe? How can Jaskier be safe by his side?

He is silent for too long. Jaskiers smile falters, crumbles. Geralt did that too. He pulls in a breath, holds it in his lungs, but the heavy feeling won't go away. “Witcher?” He doesn’t even remember his fucking name. He exhales. “We have been traveling together for a while.” Geralt says, closing his eyes, the heavy feeling won’t leave his chest, there is a pounding happening in his temples, his fingers want to clench onto something. “I was taking you to Oxenfurt.” It is not a lie. He would never, will never, lie to his bard. His bard. They have been talking about going there sometime. Why not now? A small line appears between Jaskiers eyebrows, Geralt imagines he is looking for a memory, a confirmation. “Im sorry, it is very frustrating not to remember. What is your name? Have we been traveling for long?” “No.” Geralt says. Liar, liar, liar, liar. “I am Geralt of Rivia. If you are uncomfortable with me here… I can… I don’t have to…If you still want to go there, that is.” His words are failing him and Jaskier gives him a gentle smile. The smell of fear is slowly dispatching and Jaskiers normal scent returns. “Im Julian.” He says.

Let it hurt you like it hurt me.

~

They set out together later that day. They don’t talk about what happened the day before. They barely talk at all. It is only two weeks of travel to get to Oxenfurt, and Geralt is not sure if it is a blessing or a curse. He has two weeks to either get Jaskier back, or let him go. He feels so utterly selfish, keeping this choice from Jaskier, to not let him be the one to choose. But he is simply not brave enough.

The first night under the open sky is oddly enough very much like normal. Without a word they split the tasks of making a fire, putting out bedrolls and preparing food the same way they always do.

When Jaskier fetches their bedrolls, Roach buffs his arm, begging for a treat. Geralt watches them from where he is digging out a hole for their fire. Jaskier smiles at her, petting her head gently, talking to her in soft tones. She buffs him again and tries to get into his pockets. “Im sorry girl, look, I have nothi-....” Geralt hears him trail off when he puts his hand in his pocket, only to find a sugarcube. His confusion is evident, his smile gone, but he holds it out for her.

When they are sitting by the fire, passing a cheese and some bread between them, Geralt watches Jaskier. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. “Why can I remember Roach but not you?” Jaskier suddenly asks, eyes fixed on the flames. The light flickers and paints his features in red and orange and sharp shadows. Geralt cuts off a piece of cheese and puts the rest down on the cloth between them. “What did the healer tell you?” “That I was hit with magic that altered something in my mind. She wasn’t sure of what exactly, but she wasn’t very worried about it.” Of course she wasn’t. “I don’t remember what happened that night at all.” It would finally seem like the floodgates opened. Somehow it soothes Geralt to hear him, even if the words uttered makes it worse. Geralt is quiet, chewing on his cheese slowly. “I fought a woman with untamed chaos. She lost her love and wanted revenge. You stepped in front of me when she unleashed her magic.” Jaskier nods, and sinks into his thoughts again. They barely talk for the rest of the evening. Jaskier asks no questions and Geralt is too conflicted about it all to make smalltalk. They go to bed, and when Jaskiers breath evens out and the small familiar snores fill the air together with the crackles from the dying fire, Geralt allows himself to fall. The worry, the relief, the numbing panic, the fear of loss, but he already lost him didn’t he? At least he is not dead.

~

It is weird to make smalltalk with someone he has known for years. To listen to him talk about his parents, anecdotes from his studies. He even tells him about a bar fight that he started. He tells it as if Geralt wasn’t there, right next to him, hauling his ass out of there when it got too heated. What is worse is that Geralt learns new things about his friend, about his past. And Jaskier keeps referring to himself as Julian. Every now and then there is a whiff of fear from Jaskier. Geralt tries to keep the sadness from his face. The Jaskier without Geralt will have a safe life where he won’t ever need to feel fear.

Jaskier hasn't touched his lute since they left.

~

“I um… thank you witcher.” Jaskier says awkwardly. They are outside the gates of his university. “Do I pay you now or uhm…?” “No. It’s fine.” “Will you stay here for a while? Or out on the Path again?” “Roach needs to rest, so I’ll stay for the night.” “Roach?” “....My horse….” “Right. Right. Sorry.” Jaskier is frowning again. He does that a lot now. “You know, we could take a drink together? As a thank you?” This is goodbye. Geralt can see it. “If you want to.”

~

They sit across each other in the tavern. The lighting is dim and it smells like dust and stale ale. The table probably hasn't been wiped in the last ten years, and when Geralt lifts his tankard there is a sticky sound as the table doesn’t want to let go.

It has always been hard to find words. They are tricky, deceptive, easy to misimprent. Tonight is no exception. They stick to his throat, cling to the roof of his mouth, refusing to get out. Geralt has never felt dread like this.

“Why do you look so sad, master witcher?” Jaskier asks, cocking his head. A drunk, angry man comes up to their table before Geralt can compose an answer. His cheeks are blotchy red, eyes watery and he reeks of alcohol and unwashed body. “The white fucking wolf, the freak of fucking nature.” He growls. “Butcher of fucking Blaviken.” Jaskiers eyes widen a fraction, something like recognition flickers across his face. That probably rang some kind of bell. It was so long ago. Why should it matter to anybody but him anymore? Geralt sighs, deciding that ignoring the man is the best option. “Heey! I'm talking to you, asshole!” the man slurs. “Leave off.” Jaskier says, a hint of anger coloring his voice. “Ain’t fucking talking to you, bard.” The drunkard says, waving around making his drink slosh down over his arm and onto their table. Jaskier looks confused for a moment, like there is something just out of his minds reach. “You mutant bastard, you are as much a monster as what you fucking slay” the drunkard slurs on. It has been a long time since last he was talked to like this. Much thanks to Jaskiers impressive work.

A woman with hair the colour of straw comes up to the drunkard, grabbing his elbow. “Are you nuts?” She hiss at him. “Don’t insult a witcher! Do you want to die?!” and she drags him away. Jaskier looks after them as they walk away. “Are you always treated like this?” he frowns. Geralt is really starting to hate that look on him. “Not as much anymore.” They sit in silence. “Every time I look at you, witcher, I have this nagging feeling. Like there is something I'm missing.” Every fiber of Geralt being wants to tell him. Wants to break that fucking spell, get his friend back. But he can’t. The healer is right. Jaskier has a big scar and a lost memory as proof. He will not survive a witchers company much longer. “Either way, master witcher, thank you for bringing me safely back here. I hope our roads will cross again.”

~

Geralt walks hurriedly away among the trees. It takes everything he has not to just take off running. His muscles are stiff from holding back, there is a churning inside his ribs, his eyes are burning. When he finally is far enough not to see or hear or smell Oxenfurt anymore, he sinks to his knees, lets go. He can fetch Roach in the morning.

He is anger and hurt and shuddering breaths and thunder and sadness.

He lets it all out in the darkness where no one can see.

[magus-of-the-color-pizza]

Beyond the Summary

So here’s the thing. The Story Summary came out and everyone on Twitter is roasting it for not being a real story. However, aside from one or two plot points (which I will identify in a second), a lot of people seem to be missing just how... rushed and plothole dense the story is? So, in order to properly address this, I’ve compiled this little list of grievances regarding the story in and of itself, regardless of the way it’s been “told”.

 There were a few additional plot points that I personally felt didn’t make much sense, but which, ironically, could if they were developed well, which of course they will not be. I’m going to go in order with the Summary. Let’s get this over with, shall we?

-me after reading the Story Summary, 2019

Before the gods of Theros rose to power, the titans—horrific primal urges made flesh—roamed the mortal realm, sowing death and destruction in their wake.

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: yes, the titans make sense from a Plot perspective, but hey, did you know? Despite being represented on the cards, in the story they actually DO NOT BREAK FREE and are irrelevant! They are simply a plot device to introduce Klothys! The conflict of THB is unrelated to them! (Also, there are only 2 of them, which I find kind of weird but whatever)

Klothys, the god of fate, volunteered to act as jailer and sequestered herself in the Underworld for eternity.

Ok, clever way to introduce the new god, except for the fact that we’ve been told in the past that the Gods of Theros require constant devotion/followers or they will lose power/cease to exist. How did Klothys avoid this fate?

Ashiok's visions are more real than most, and in one of them, Elspeth seized Heliod's spear Khrusor. When the vision had passed, a twisted version of the spear remained, dripping with darkness and power.

For this to happen, it would have to be intentional on Ashiok’s part. It might be, but it’s weird to omit that. What were their intentions in granting Elspeth that spear? 

Secondly, Ashiok learned of the Phyrexians' existence and promptly planeswalked away to learn more of these true living nightmares.

Ashiok is the type of person that plans miles ahead. If they gave Elspeth the spear intentionally to wreak chaos, do they not care to see what happens next? And what happened to all their plans regarding Theros and the nature of the gods and belief? I can understand they’d be very interested in Phyrexia, but it seems weird to just drop everything and go.

And when gods clash, mortals suffer the consequences. One such consequence took the form of rifts to the Underworld from which countless monsters poured forth. Erebos, the god of the Underworld, was consumed by this conflict. He hated Heliod most of all, and in his rage, he neglected to keep a tight grip on the souls under his purview. News travels fast, even in the afterlife, and Elspeth heard talk of rifts to the mortal realm. Realizing her work in the Multiverse was not yet done, Elspeth gripped her shadow spear and headed toward a hidden exit in Erebos's palace—but she wasn't the only one seeking escape.

This whole paragraph is... oof. The rifts are a super convenient plot device, not to mention Erebos’s slight mischaracterization. The whole image of Elspeth just up-and-leaving the realm of death is pretty funny, I have to say.

Klothys was furious. When Xenagos attempted to take her place in the pantheon, she was understandably upset.

I’m sorry, her place in the pantheon? Yes they both fall under Gruul colors but not only does the pantheon not have a finite number of spots, Xenagos became the God of Revels, that has nothing to do with Destiny. Also, Klothys made the decision to remain to seal the Titans, remember? She had no followers.

As Elspeth headed toward freedom, she gathered allies. Along her journey, she faced many battles and powerful foes, and she fought them all off. After each victory, she raised her spear high and proclaimed: "Behold, the true Khrusor! Heliod wields a fake!"

Aside from being salty at the fact that we’re just going to leave Elspeth’s struggles at the generic “many battles and powerful foes” (Who? Why? Where? How? When?), keep in mind that we are still in the Underworld for this part of the story. So the faith she is supposedly gathering for herself/the weapon by proclaiming its true nature to, I guess, random people that were hanging around while she beat up her foes (unless you’re telling me she gathered an army, which raises way more questions) (which will be relevant in a second) comes from Returned, not living denizens. That raises so many questions I think I’m just going to move on to the next part.

She also clashed repeatedly with Calix, emerging victorious every time. After all, she was a seasoned warrior, and he was freshly made. But with each battle, Calix did a little better—he was learning his foe as he learned himself.

This part might be the one that irks me the most, to be honest. As previously stated, Elspeth has defeated many powerful foes. This Calix guy, who is a masterwork of sentient mana-construct created by Klothys, wants to return her to her place in the underworld. So first of all, he finds her, ok, that I can accept. And then...? They fight. So Elspeth beats him up and leaves him alive? Or does he make a daring escape? Because they “clash repeatedly”. Did they just agree to meet every day at the same hour? Why does Calix not play it smart and ambush her if he can track her so well? Why does Elspeth not kill this severe threat to her mission? Wh- you know what, let’s just move onward.

Heliod stood in Elspeth's way, refusing her passage out of the Underworld. She could not be allowed to escape. She would be the end of him. She was the cause of all this. Ranting under his breath, he charged Elspeth with his spear Khrusor . . . which promptly shattered in his hands. For each time Elspeth repeated that her shadowspear was the true Khrusor, the onlooker souls believed her. And it was the power of that belief, that devotion, that caused her lie to simply become truth. Staring down the point of a spear that was no longer his, Heliod yielded.

Heliod’s descent into paranoia is actually something I really regret not being able to see in full (must’ve been some powerful paranoia indeed since it made him wage a solo war against ALL the other gods). What I’m going to point out is that Elspeth’s plan... works. Really? You managed to gather so much faith (again, from dead Therosians) that you managed to surpass the unofficial Main God of this world and his very much official Khrushor to become fake? I mean I know Ajani and the leonin did their fair share of spreading doubts regarding Heliod (speaking of, where the hell is Ajani for the events of this set?), but I really have a hard time seeing how Heliod loses this battle even though he is the one that started the conflict, yes Therosians may begin to turn against him but to lose their faith completely... I’m not sold. Also, Heliod just gives up? Damn, this dude started an entire war based on the fear he might be replaced and then when a mortal challenges him, he yields. This is a god that has erased entire cities from existence!

Erebos simply took the defeated sun god and placed him beneath a giant boulder, where he would suffer for all eternity, or until he was forgotten by his worshippers above. As for Elspeth, Erebos gifted her his eternal gratitude—and safe passage back to the mortal realm.

Like a random boulder? A boulder big enough to be a nuisance to a god? And why can’t Heliod just move? It’s not like he has the responsibility to hold up the heaves/surface/underworld, it’s literally just a boulder. Also, reminder that Heliod is the most venerated/important god on Theros. The fact that he is so nonchalantly removed from his duties and placed under punishment is downright absurd! Especially since the whole Xenagos thing was a huge controversy among the gods, who are, in a wonderful metaphor of the capitalist status quo by the way, way more interested in preserving their collective status as deities than actually going after the other gods, despite being rivals (it is canon that they have technically agreed not only not to harm each other but also to not interfere directly with each other’s affairs on the surface). Also, he’s alive! Who will take his place as God of the sun/day/light/whatever? Sure generations would forget him eventually but for the meantime, Therosians will just live on with no deity of so many important things? What? WHAT

After a brief reunion with Daxos, Elspeth planeswalked away.

Oh ok. So Elspeth is finally free, meets up with her lover, who has been transformed into a demi-god (is it reversible? Is he sentient? What happens to him now that Heliod has been defeated?), chats, and then leaves. How was their reunion? What did they say? Can Daxos be saved? Is he gonna be a regular Therosian now? Do they care about each other anymore? Does Elspeth get the catharsis/absolution she craves for being manipulated into killing him? Guess we don’t care, huh.

Calix looked on, his very being in agony. It was his purpose to return Elspeth to where she belonged, and now he could no longer reach her. But in his darkest hour, a strange idea sparked within him—and he simply planeswalked after her.

And finally, the line most people have been nitpicking on (for good reason). Calix is a freaking “created being”, which according to MtG rules, should NOT be able to innately possess a spark! What’s going on, huh? We’ve been bending “spark rules” for a while now (Jiang Yanggu and Mowu, the Royal Scions, Kaya’s ABSURD ability to transport non-planeswalkers to other planes) but this is a straight-up break. Also I love the “Rip to your mana construct but I would simply planeswalk” memes people have made about this, but one more thing. Did Calix miss the part where Erebos says Elspeth is free to go? What would happen if he brought her back, huh? “Oh no man don’t worry, she’s good”. Even if Calix believes Klothys’s will is more important than Erebos’s (if Klothys even still wants Elspeth back in the underworld after Erebos pardones her), how does he think he’s going to get her to stay there if Erebos doesn’t want her? Just gonna straight-up kill her? And again I ask, WHY didn’t Elspeth kill this guy? ARGH

-a visual metaphor of being a Vorthos right now

That concludes... whatever the heck this was. Thank you for listening and if you have any comments or additions, please let me know. I will say one thing: it is terribly ironic that the world that first sparked my interest for both writing and the magic story by kicking off the “golden age of mtg story” is also the one where the story is reduced to random blurbs on cards and whatever this garbage fire was. Truly a sad day for all of us. 

[filmfanatic82]

AO3 link (HERE)

Chapter 14:

“That thing you're puttin’ on me

Has got me so confused

Won't somebody help me, tell me what should I do

In my heart it feels so good, is it just a curse

Will it get better, or will it get worse

Is it love, or just a curse

Do you feel good when I hurt

I need your heart to open up

If this love's not real, then it's just my luck”

-- Is It Love, Pink

__________

“Pen?! Pen?! Oh, God! Please wake up… Please…” Josie's voice cuts through the darkness like a warm beacon of hope, pulling Penelope back into the land of consciousness. Penelope blinks and instantly winces from the white-hot pain radiating out from the back of her head. 

“Jojo?” Penelope says as the familiar surroundings of Alaric’s office once again come into view. “Did you hit me?” 

Josie lets out a wet bark of a laugh and nods through her tears. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were one of those guys.”  

“Triad?” 

Josie nods again. She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and then forces herself to smile. 

“And here I was worried you didn’t have a way to defend yourself.” Penelope sits up as she tries to shake off the last remaining remnants of the spontaneous head injury. “Are you okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” 

Penelope shrugs. “Eh… I’ve lived through worse.”

“You really have, haven’t you?” Josie responds with a softness to her voice that all but instantly breaks Penelope. She ever-so-carefully reaches forward and brushes her fingers against the tender flesh of Penelope’s neck, tracing an invisible pathway that Penelope knows by heart. 

“Jojo,” Penelope says fighting with every ounce of strenght she has left within her to keep her composure. “I’m so--”

“Don’t,” Josie cuts Penelope off. Her fingers stop and she blinks back a fresh set of tears. “Please don’t apologize. Not ever again.”

“But, I--”

Before Penelope can get another word out, Josie’s lips are upon her own pouring out an endless wealth of mixed emotions. Grief… Fear… Sorrow… Love… Passion… Desire… Each one spreads across Penelope’s soul, patching back up the hardened cracks one by one. 

And for a moment, everything ceases to exist except for Penelope and the girl she would always call her home. Just the two of them. Together again. Bodies and souls interlocking once more like two long lost puzzle pieces.

But it’s only for a moment. 

A long slow clap penetrates the room like a gunshot, instantly grabbing hold of both Penelope’s and Josie’s full attention. 

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Penelope’s head whips towards the doorway to find a hulking man clad in head to toe black tactical gear staring back at them. He claps steadily, with one hand holding tight onto a 9 millimeter, locked and loaded as if it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Please… Don’t stop on my behalf,” the man says, each word dripping with a thick, condescending tone. “Go on. Act as if I’m not here at all.”

Penelope slowly rises to the feet, never once taking her eyes off of the man. She places her hand on Josie’s arm and nudges her to step behind. “Who are you?” 

“Oh, I think you know who I am, Penelope Park.” A sick and twisted smirk spreads across the man’s lips. “But I’ll play along for the hell of it. My name is Burr and I work--”

“For Triad,” Penelope responds, finishing Burr’s sentence.

“Ah, you do know, don’t you?” 

“We don’t have what you’re looking for.” Penelope tightens her grip on Josie as her eyes dart between the gun and Burr’s obsidian eyes. 

“And what would that be?” Burr responds. He takes a step into the room, causing Penelope to automatically inch backward.

Penelope goes to open her mouth but before she can get the words out--

“The relic,” Josie says. She steps out from behind Penelope, to face Burr dead on. She takes hold of Penelope’s hand and gives it a firm squeeze. “You’re here for the relic.” 

Burr’s sick smile widens at the full sight of Josie. “Good guess, Ms. Saltzman. And you would’ve been right, except for someone-- someone who ironically enough just so happens to be in this very room right now-- altered our time.”

“How the hell do you know…” Penelope trails off too confused to even finish her own thought. 

“That you used a Cultellus Intempestus? Or that you aren’t from this exact timeline?” Burr asks. “Both are valid questions.”

Penelope swallows the dry lump of sudden panic bubbling up in the back of her throat. She can’t pull her eyes off of the gun.

How does he know?

And more importantly… 

What comes next?

Penelope’s mind runs rampant, cycling through the thousands upon thousands of possibilities. Each one is more terrifying than the last. 

If it’s not about the relic and Malivore, then why are they even here to begin with?

Penelope’s eyes dart faster. Ping-ponging from the gun to Burr to Josie and then back to the gun. 

What is she missing?  

“So if you’re not here for the relic, then what do you want?” Penelope asks finally breaking the silence in the room. 

“Simple,” Burr responds without a moment’s hesitation. “I want you.”

“What?” Penelope blurts out in disbelief. She feels Josie instinctively move closer as a wave of palatable fear radiates off of the brunette. “Me? You want me? But why?”

Burr lets out a mocking laugh and cocks his head in surprise. “Really? You can’t figure it out? I practically spelled it out for you, but if that’s the case, then alright… Let’s do this. We want you, Penelope Park, for one reason and one reason only. Knowledge. You-- more specifically that brain of yours-- has a wealth of future knowledge that is, in short, invaluable in a multitude of ways. Ways that you nor I can’t even begin to fathom just yet. But, if used correctly, it could ensure the future safety of thousands of human beings. If not, the entire world.”

“You make it sound like I’m freakin’ Sarah Connor or something.” 

Burr shrugs. “In some ways you are.”

“Fine. If you want knowledge, then you can have it. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Penelope replies with a strong exhale of air. She’s trying to keep her poker face intact but it’s getting harder with each and every second that passes. 

Burr sucks his teeth and in that instance, Penelope knows that it isn’t going to be as simple as her participating in a lengthy debriefing session or two. “Yeah… That’s not going to work. I meant what I said… Triad wants you.”

“No,” Josie says with forcefulness to her voice that Penelope has heard only once before from the girl. Now it’s Josie’s turn to take a slight step in front, blocking Penelope from Burr with her full body. “You can’t have her.”

“Oh, but I can.” Burr fires back. He waves his gun as a cold, harsh reminder, causing both Josie and Penelope to tense up with the mere thought of what resides within its chambers. “See either Penelope here is going to come with me peacefully without any funny business from you or anyone else for that matter… or else I’m going to ensure that history repeats itself.” 

And Penelope knows without a doubt that he means every single last word. Burr will pull that trigger. He’s done it before. So, he will do it again in a heartbeat if provoked. 

There’s no other option… At least none in the given moment. Especially not without the use of magic. 

It’s either freely go with Burr and Triad or…

Or nothing.

The alternative is simply not an option. 

Not for Penelope.

Penelope starts to move out from behind Josie once again. “Josie, I--”

“No.” Josie shoves Penelope back, shielding her even more than before from Burr’s grasp. “Not an option.”

“But--”

“No!” 

“Time’s a tickin’ ladies,” Burr says with an audible click of his gun. “You’ve got to the count of five.” 

“Josie…” Penelope says, locking eyes with the brown-haired siphoner.

“1… 2…”

“No! Don’t you even dare think about it. I’m not letting you go with him. I’m not--” Josie fires back.

“3… 4…”

“Jojo, please,” Penelope cuts Josie off as she fights with all of her might to get out from behind the girl. “Just let me—“

“5.”

CRASH.

BANG.

What happens next is nothing short of a blur of chaotic commotion. Just as Burr pulls the trigger, the office door explodes open in a hailstorm of wooden splinters, instantaneously knocking everyone off of their feet. 

Penelope hits the floor with a sobering thud, knocking the air straight out of her lungs on impact. She lets out a long groan, then rolls to her side and coughs, trying her best to shake off the blast.

“Penelope?” 

“Jojo?” Penelope mumbles in reply, voice thick with confusion. She glances over towards the doorway, expecting to see the brown-haired siphoner but instead spots Lizzie and Hope. They stand there side by side, hands joined and slightly out of breath. 

And in an instance, Penelope knows that their powers are back. There’s no mistaking it. Lizzie and Hope share a look of slight surprise mixed with the post-spell rush of adrenaline.

Hope and Lizzie both race into the office, wordlessly dividing and conquering. Lizzie makes a beeline straight for Burr’s unconscious body and without a moment’s hesitation, siphons some magic off of the floor and performs a binding spell, encasing Burr in a dense blue aura. 

Hope moves towards Penelope and scrambles to clear away the excess debris. “Pen?! You okay?”

“Yeah,” Penelope pushes herself up and takes a good look around at the wreckage of the office. “What the hell was that?” 

“A Crepitus charm,” Lizzie responds. She scoops up Burr’s gun and safely tucks it away in the waistband of her jeans. “Still working out a kink or two with it.”

“Kink? You call causing exploding a half-ton oak wood door into thousands of pieces a kink?” Hope asks, shooting Lizzie a look of pure disbelief.

“Yes… Yes, I do. The alternative could’ve been me causing the whole room to explode.” Lizzie joins in on clearing the debris. “Now where’s my sister?”

“She was just here,” Penelope says. Hope helps her up to her feet and the three begin to comb the piles of debris for any signs whatsoever of Josie. 

“There! Under the desk!” Hope shouts not even a second later and before Lizzie or her has time to react, Penelope is already there. She carefully flips back over the upended desk to reveal Josie’s battered body strewn amongst the wreckage like a discarded rag doll. 

“No… No…” Penelope utters as a wave of impending doom crashes down upon her. She immediately drops down, clearing out the stray pieces of splintered wood and starts to check Josie’s vitals.

“Oh God…” Hope says, frozen in place at the sight of Josie.

“Is she…” Lizzie follows up, eyes also glued upon her sister’s seemingly lifeless body.

“No. There’s a pulse and she’s breathing, but…” Penelope trails off as her eyes wander downwards towards Josie’s chest and is hit dead on with yet another tidal wave of pure, undiluted dread. There, in the center of Josie’s chest is a small but distinct bullet hole. “No! Shit! No! He shot her… Fuck! He shot her!”

The brutal honesty of Penelope words manage to instantly unfreeze both Lizzie and Hope. They rush over to join the raven-hair girl, as all eyes lock in on the tiny charred hole. 

“Why isn’t there blood?” Hope asks, glancing over at Penelope in bewilderment. 

“I… I dunno…” Penelope shakes her head as her mind races for an answer-- any answer-- to Hope’s question. 

There should be blood. 

But there isn’t any…

How can that be?

Lizzie grabs hold of the bottom of Josie’s sweatshirt and carefully lifts it up to reveal…  

A bulletproof vest.

“What the…” Penelope utters, staring at the vest, not fully believing her eyes. Her fingers trace over the indention in the center of the material where the fragments of the bullet are lodged, jagged yet somewhat smooth to the touch.

“I read the journal,” Josie says in nothing more than a whisper as her eyes flicker open and a small smile slides across her lips. 

And Penelope can’t help but let out a sob of relief. She smiles back at Josie as tears start to form in her eyes. “You did?”

Josie nods with a wince. “Every last word.”

“You did,” Penelope repeats her words letting their meaningfully sink in. She leans in and plants a loving peck of a kiss upon Josie’s lips unable to express her utter sense of thankfulness in any other way. 

“Well thank fucking god,” Lizzie says with a shake of her head. “But where the hell did you get a bulletproof vest from?” 

“Dad,” Josie responds. 

“Alaric has a bulletproof vest?” Hope asks almost more to herself than to anyone else in the room.

Josie nods. “He keeps in the back of his weapons closet, behind the crossbows. I’ve seen it a few times before so that’s why I came here first. Figured I should grab it just in case something were to happen.”

“Smart move,” Hope replies with a weighted exhale of air. 

“I know, but at the moment, it doesn’t exactly feel like it...” Josie attempts to sit up, but only manages to move a few inches before collapsing back down in visible pain. “Even with this thing on, getting shot still hurts like hell.” 

“No shit,” Lizzie says.

“Here,” Penelope hooks her arm under Josie’s body, allowing the brunette to lean her weight against her, and carefully helps her up to her feet.

Josie takes a moment to catch her breath and then glances over at Burr. “What should we do with him?”

“The binding spell should hold up for now unless magic goes back down again. We can put a Sigillum charm on the office as well as a safety measure since there isn’t a door to lock anymore,” Hope shoots Lizzie a look at these words and Lizzie just rolls her eyes in response. “And then Lizzie and I can go track down Alaric… You two should head to my room. It’s the most secure place, given its location. Plus, it’s the last place anyone will think to look for either one of you.”

Penelope nods and readjusts her grip on Josie before starting to lead them towards the doorway. “Sounds good to me.”

“Please be safe,” Josie says to Lizzie as she reaches out and gives Lizzie’s hand a light squeeze. 

“Me? I should be saying that to you,” Lizzie scoffs but returns the squeeze nonetheless in a shared moment of sisterly reassurance.

“Don’t worry, Liz,” Penelope pipes up, catching hold of Lizzie’s eyes for a moment. “I’ve got her.”

“I know you do,” Lizzie responds with an all-knowing smile. 

And with that, Penelope and Josie take off out of the office and back into the melee unfolding throughout the hallways of the school. They zigzag through the chaos, ducking and weaving as they go, with Penelope never once loosening her death-lock grip on Josie. 

Shots ring out and random hexes fire back all at once, from all sides hitting anything and everything in their way. It’s nothing short of a supernatural war zone on steroids with no clear signifier as to who really has the real upper hand. 

“Pen,” Josie says in between labored breaths as she struggles to keep up. “I… I can’t--”

“Yes, you can,” Penelope cuts her off and once again readjusts her arms in order to take on even more of Josie’s weight. “You’ve got this, Jojo. Just need to get past the library, down the stairs and over to--” 

BOOM.

Stunned, Penelope and Josie freeze in their tracks. A mangled mess of hulking Triad members fly through the air only ten feet in front of them and crash into the nearby wall with a bone-crushing thud. 

“What the--” 

“Go!” Lizzie screams out from behind them and Penelope glances back to spot the blonde-haired siphoner standing there, back to back with Hope, firing off spells with an expert-like precision.  

“Is that…” Josie asks in slight disbelief as they pick back up the pace and continue on down the hallway. 

“Oh yeah,” Penelope responds. “Safe to say Salvatore has a new power couple.” 

“Seriously.”

__________

“Sera,” Penelope says under her breath and with a quick flick of her fingers, a cool green film expands across the dorm room door forming an impenetrable seal. “There. No one’s getting in here unless they have the password.”

“And what’s that?” Josie asks as she finishes peels off the bulletproof vest from her body and then slides her sweatshirt back on. 

Penelope plops herself down on Hope’s bed next to the brown-haired siphoner and smirks. “Furball.”

“Furball,” Josie repeats matching Penelope’s smirk with a warm smile of her own. “God, that’s such a great nickname.”

“Right? And you’ve got no idea just how fitting it really is… Especially--” 

“After the eyes?” Josie asks, finishing Penelope’s sentence.

Penelope lets out a bit of a laugh and nods. “Yeah… The eyes. I forgot I wrote about that.” 

“You wrote about a lot.” 

“I did.” 

“And went through a lot too.” 

“Six years worth.” Penelope sighs as a wave of sheer exhaustion washes over her. She curls her body up into the space next to Josie, being extra cautious not to inflict any more damage as she does. 

And Josie, in turn, nuzzles herself even closer and wraps Penelope up into a comforting embrace. 

“There’s so much I want to ask you,” Josie says with a yawn. “But before we get into it, can we please just take a nap together first?”

Penelope nods, barely able to keep her own eyes open. “Of course.” 

“Good,” Josie replies. She leans down and plants a tender kiss on the top of Penelope’s head. 

“I love you.” Those three simple yet powerful words tumble out of Penelope’s lips with a newfound conviction that up until this very moment had felt almost unattainable. 

Somehow, regardless of the countless missteps and mistakes along the way, everything has fallen into place and for the first time in what seems like forever, Penelope is able to breathe easy knowing that Josie-- her Josie-- is safe within her arms.

“I love you too, Penelope Park.” Josie replies and Penelope swears she can feel that all too familiar smile sliding across Josie’s face with her words. “I love you too.” 

[verai-marcel]

The Better To Take You (RDR2 Fanfic, Arthur x Fem!Reader, 18+)

Summary: You get thrown off your horse and it runs away, spooked by all the howling you hear in the forest. Left alone on the path to the next town in the middle of the night, you have no choice but to walk the rest of the way. But what dangers lurk in the shadows?

Author’s Notes: @horsegirl1h asked me for a werewolf Arthur, and I was incredibly happy to oblige! This is a high honor on the streets, low honor in the sheets kind of Arthur. 

Word Count: ~5000

Tags: werewolf Arthur, red riding hood-inspired, smut, biting, rough sex, supernatural elements, alternate ending, RDR2 spoilers

AO3 Link is here!

--------------------

Dressed in a riding skirt and a short-sleeved blouse, you wrapped your dark red cloak tighter around you as a light breeze sent the chill of the night past your skin as you rode down the forest path. You looked up at the river of stars running across the sky and sighed. Your parents had sent you alone to check on your aging grandmother. They had to take care of the shop and couldn’t spare the time to check on the old woman, but you could go. You loved your grandma, but she lived on her own in a cabin in the middle of the woods, a full three days’ ride away. 

Well, it was a three-day ride if you only rode while it was light out. Your grand plan was to ride for as long as possible, maybe trim it down to a two day trip. 

You heard the howling of a wolf in the distance. Your horse whinnied and reared back all of a sudden, much to your surprise. He hadn’t been spooked before by the sounds of wolves. Holding desperately to the reins, you tried to calm him down, but he'd have none of it. 

"Easy boy, easy!" you cooed, trying your best to stay calm. But then another howl rang through the forest, and your horse's eyes widened and he jolted through the forest in the opposite direction. You pulled on the reins again, but your horse had enough of you; he kicked and flung you out of the saddle. 

You landed in a bush off the rough trail, scraping your arm. Groaning, you got up gingerly and brushed yourself off, checking for any other injuries. Your ankle hurt a bit, and blood trickled down your arm. Great. Just what you wanted. You tore off a piece of your cloak and wrapped your arm before continuing on, keeping an ear out for the wolf. It had sounded far off, and you wondered why your horse had spooked so bad. You pulled the gun from your haversack and kept walking.

***

It had been an hour since you lost your horse, and whistling for it didn't help. He had probably ran all the way back home, the coward. No matter. You could get to the next town and send a message to your folks, let them know you were alright. 

But you were getting sleepy, and being on alert this late at night, with you being as tired as you were, wasn't helping your energy levels. As you kept walking, hoping to come across a cabin or a shed along the way, you heard a rustling in the bushes behind you. 

Turning around, you stared dumbly at the giant wolf that slowly walked towards you. It made no sudden movements, no attempts to hide itself. It just stared at you as it plodded along. 

You raised your gun. It paused. 

"Stay back."

It stayed where it was. 

Then you heard howling coming from a different direction. The wolf turned its head, it ears perked up and listening. 

You took this moment to turn and run down the road. You heard the wolf loping after you. 

"Damn damn damn damn!" 

There was a crashing of bushes to your left as three smaller wolves came out onto the path, blocking your way. You quickly skidded to a halt and took a deep breath. This was it, then. A bunch of wolves tearing you apart, all because you wanted to see your grandma. 

Except the wolf that had been behind you walked in front of you and started growling at the other wolves. They, in turn, started growling back.

Taking advantage of the standoff, you took a shot at one of the smaller wolves, hitting it between the eyes. It fell over, causing the other two to back off a few steps. But they quickly regained their composure, both leaping towards you.

The giant wolf went for one of them while you shot at the other. Five shots later, you had completely missed. Shooting a moving target was much harder than a stationary one. Realizing you had no more ammo, the other wolf decided to go after you at full speed.

You turned and ran, adrenaline making you forget your injured ankle as you ducked into the forest and zig zagged through the trees, leaping past rocks and bushes—

Then your cloak got snagged on a branch.

You tore it as you pulled away, but that gave the wolf precious seconds to catch up to you. It barreled into you, knocking you onto the ground. As you stopped rolling and ended on your back, you looked up just as the wolf landed on top of you, its claws digging into your chest. Your death was staring you in the eyes and you stared back, pissed off and scared as hell.

Then the wolf suddenly flew up and hovered in the air above you.

And then you saw behind it.

A giant wolf monster, standing on two legs, held up the wolf and cracked its neck. Hucking the body behind it, the creature turned its golden stare onto you. Its nostrils flared and its breath clouded in the cold night air. The moonlight gave it an unholy halo as it stalked towards you and let out a low growl.

You couldn’t breathe. The last thing you saw was the wolf monster’s large jaws, dripping with blood, and the heavy thump of its paws was the final thing you heard before you fainted.

***

The sound of a man humming a song gently woke you. You blinked your eyes, noticing that you were in a tent, lying on a bed roll. Your cloak was folded next to you, your bag on top. Sitting up, you checked to make sure all your clothes were intact before crawling out and into the light.

A man was sitting at a campfire, making coffee. His blue shirt had a few mud stains, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His jeans were worn and faded, his boots scuffed.

“Rise ‘n shine, miss.” 

He turned, and you were met with the bluest eyes and warmest smile you had ever seen. He had a short beard and light brown hair that looked soft and feathery. You found yourself wanting to reach out and bury your fingers in his hair.

“G-good morning,” you stammered. Had you dreamed up the whole thing with the wolf monster? “How did you find me?”

“I was out huntin’, found you passed out in the forest. Couldn’t leave a lady alone to get eaten by wolves.”

“Did… did you see any wolves nearby?”

“Just heard some, but I didn’t see any.”

You sat across from him and considered his words. Maybe you had imagined everything last night in a fevered dream, fueled by exhaustion and fear. You looked around and whistled. The man watched as you stood up. You winced when you put weight on your ankle, but you slowly hobbled in a circle, continuing to whistle.

Yup. Your horse was gone.

“Need a ride?”

You looked at the man, somewhat suspicious. “I’ll be fine.”

He raised an eyebrow at you. “I find you passed out in the forest with a cut on your arm and your cloak all tore up. Forgive me fer not believin’ ya when ya say you’ll be fine, especially with how you was walkin’ just now.”

You sat back down in a huff, noticing the bandage around your arm. “Thanks for bandaging me up,” you mumbled. “And yes, if you don’t mind. I could use a ride.”

He grinned as if you had said something funny. “Where you off to?”

You told him the name of the town that was closest to your grandmother’s house. At least then you could walk from there, and he wouldn’t know where she lived. 

“That’s two days away on horseback. Were you plannin’ on walkin’ there?”

“I had a horse…” you said, trailing off.

“Wolves, I reckon.”

“Yeah.” You paused before asking, “You ever see a giant wolf around these parts?”

“How giant?”

“The size of a pony.”

The man scoffed. “Nothin’ that big. Maybe just looked bigger at night.”

You sighed. Maybe you really had imagined it all.

“Should we get going then?” you asked. “Gonna be three days if we don’t leave soon.”

The man chuckled. “Let’s finish breakfast first. Git to know one another, at least exchange names.”

“Oh. Yes.” You told him your name, and a little bit about the town you came from.

“Name’s Arthur. I’m just a hunter from out west, lookin' fer some new furs.”

You smiled. “Also rescuer of ladies, it seems,” you joked. “Thank you.”

His eyes carried some heat when he looked at you, and his voice was low and rumbly, stirring something low in your body when you heard him. “My pleasure, darlin’.”

***

You rode sidesaddle on the back of his horse, a big warhorse that could probably carry a whole family. Holding onto the back of his saddle, you watched the world go by at a slow pace, wondering why he wouldn't go faster. 

Then he stopped altogether. 

"What—" 

He hushed you by turning and placing a finger on your lips as he scanned the forest, his eyes staring out through the trees, the mid-morning sun filtering down. He got off the horse and pulled you down, quickly carrying you towards a fallen tree and hiding you behind it. 

"Stay here. Don't come out unless I come find you. No matter what you hear."

You nodded and hid. 

A few minutes later, you heard other horses approaching. 

"Well well, a lone traveler. Ain't that a shame. Maybe you should give us some of that money you got, and we'll let you leave."

Then you heard gunshots and ducked further down, hoping that Arthur was alright. He had just saved you, and was now risking his life to keep you safe. And you had thought that chivalry was dead. 

You heard the gunshots stop, heard footsteps coming closer to your hiding spot, and braced for the worst. You let out a sigh of relief when you saw Arthur, a little grazed, but otherwise unharmed. 

"It's safe now, miss. We can go." He kneeled down and gently lifted you up, one arm under your knees, the other around your back. He held you as if you were a precious treasure, his grip on you as solid as iron. 

You held onto him tightly as he carried you back to his horse. You felt a warmth go through your body at his touch, and craved more. 

***

It was nearly sundown when Arthur pulled off the main road into the trees, finding a small clearing far enough from the path where a small tent wouldn’t be bothered. 

Lifting you off his horse and carrying you to a log to sit on, Arthur grabbed the bedroll and tent, setting the bedroll near you while he started putting up the tent. Keeping your weight off your bad ankle, you rolled the bedroll out and sat down upon it, gathering up your cloak to use as a blanket and your haversack as your pillow.

“What’re you doin’?”

You looked up at Arthur. “Setting up my sleeping spot?”

He pointed at the tent he had just finished putting up. “No way am I lettin’ a lady sleep out in the open. Git yer things in there.”

“But—”

“This ain’t up for debate.”

You grumpily took your bag and your cloak and put them inside the tent. Then you helped Arthur start a campfire while he pulled out some dried meat and a can of vegetables out to share with you. You still had some bread and some dried fruit in your bag for the trip, so the two of you managed to have a somewhat filling meal.

“I’ll hunt somethin’ tomorrow,” he said as he sat on the bedroll next to you, his arm close to yours. All you had to do was lean over an inch, and you’d be touching him. You didn’t dare, although you wanted to.

“You gonna be okay?” he asked, glancing at your arm and ankle.

You nodded. “Of course. I’m not some sheltered lady. If my horse hadn’t ran, I’d have my tent and bedroll.”

Arthur chuckled before he gently nudged your shoulder with his. “Alright then. Head off to sleep, we’ll get up at first light.”

You nodded and crawled into his tent, wrapping your cloak around you and laying your head on your haversack. As sleep took you, you saw Arthur laying back on the bedroll just outside of the tent, his head turned away from you. You fell asleep pretty quick, feeling safe that he was guarding you.

***

That night, you dreamed of the wolf monster again. Except this time, he wasn’t a blood splattered, growling beast. He looked a bit more docile, but he was still scary.

And you were in his arms, tightly held in his embrace. 

You don’t remember much of the dream, to be honest. It was more like a series of sensations: the soft fur against your skin, the solid heartbeat near your ears, the warmth that surrounded you, making you feel cherished. You didn’t want to leave; you wanted to stay wrapped in that safe cocoon forever, knowing that nothing could hurt you here.

***

You woke up feeling like you had been rejuvenated; the tiredness that had dogged you the entire day yesterday was gone, and you felt like you could travel for another two days straight with no issue. Even your ankle was feeling a little better. 

Looking outside, you saw that Arthur was still lying on the ground on his side, gently snoring. He must have been keeping watch and probably didn’t sleep through the whole night. You decided to let him sleep a little while longer as you quietly took down the tent for him. As you wrapped your cloak around you, you noticed soft fur clinging to the fabric. You brushed away the golden strands, wondering where that had come from; maybe it was from that wolf a couple of days ago?

You shuddered, remembering the wolf monster. It was definitely a dream; things like that did not exist. You must have passed out after the wolf tackled you, and somehow, had been left alone to be found by Arthur. There was no other explanation.

“Miss?”

You turned to see Arthur, awake and looking at you quizzically, his head tilted at a cute angle. It reminded you of your parents' old dog when you were a kid, who would turn his head whenever he was confused by you.

“G’morning,” you said simply, smiling at him. He returned your smile and came to help you take down the tent, gesturing for you to sit down and get off your ankle. 

“You seemed distracted. Somethin’ on yer mind?”

“Um.”

“You don’t hafta tell me if you don’t want to.”

You sighed. “It’s crazy.”

“Maybe it is. Maybe it ain’t. Would you feel better if you got it off your chest?”

You pondered his words for a moment. “Okay. Well. I dreamed. Of a… a wolf-man.”

“And?” Arthur nodded, encouraging you to continue.

“And… he hugged me.”

“Were you scared?”

“No, that’s the crazy part. I felt… safe.”

After a few moments of silence, you finally looked up at Arthur, expecting him to be looking at you like an insane person.

Instead, he was giving you an enigmatic look.

You looked away. "Anyway. Thanks for listening."

Arthur just hummed and pat your shoulder gently.

As the two of you packed up and got back on his horse, you got the feeling that his mind had wandered far away. 

***

"Smells like rain," Arthur mumbled. 

You sniffed the air; all you could smell was the pine trees and Arthur. Not that he smelled bad. He just had a scent to him that made you want to snuggle into his back and wrap your arms around him. You resisted the urge, no matter how much you wanted to. 

A flash of lightning across the evening sky distracted you from your thoughts. You silently counted to three before you heard the thunder, sonorous and foreboding. 

"Better find some shelter for the night. We won't make it to town before the storm hits."

You looked at Arthur, confused. "We're not that far, are we?" You really didn't want to be trapped in the rain. 

"We're another half a day's ride, sweetheart. The storm'll hit in the next hour."

He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so you decided to trust him. He took his horse off the road and towards the side of a hill, looking for a cave. He found one, a small cavern just perfect to fit the two of you with a small campfire.

He picked you up off the horse and carried you into the cavern. 

"I can walk," you protested, although you loved being in his arms. 

"Better to stay off your feet until you're healed," he grumbled. "I'll bring you some firewood, so you can make a fire. You can stay seated for that."

You nodded and waited. At least he was letting you help in some ways. 

Arthur came back pretty quickly with a pile of firewood and a rabbit. You got to work making the fire while he skinned the rabbit and cut up the meat to cook. You two had a nice meal, filling and delicious. 

Setting up the bed roll for you, he settled on the other side of the fire and lay down, staring at the cave ceiling. You glanced over at him; he was putting his hat over his head, just as the first drops fell from the sky. Turning your attention to the cave entrance, you watched as the rain picked up in a matter of minutes, becoming a wall of water as the storm hit the area full force. You were very glad for Arthur's natural intuition.

Lost in thought as you stared outside, you barely noticed Arthur staring at you from under the brim of his hat. 

"What?" 

He quickly looked away. "Nothin'."

You considered him for a moment as he turned back and eyed you warily. He sat up quickly when you started to crawl over to him.

"You shouldn't be gettin' so close to strange men," he said, his voice growing husky. 

"You're not strange," you replied, growing bold. You gently touched his arm and leaned against him. "You're kind. Thank you for everything. Truly."

Arthur took a sharp breath when you touched him, and now, as you glanced at him, he was watching you with a hunger in his eyes, something carnal and dangerous that you had seen a glimpse of before. 

A thrill went through your body. You wanted him to keep looking at you like he was starving and you were a feast. 

“I haven’t done anything for you. Let me rub your back at least, for all the work you’ve done keeping me safe.”

He shook his head. “Just yer company is thanks enough, miss.” His voice was low and tremulous, as if he was having a hard time controlling himself.

“Please, let me feel like I’m helping you in return,” you insisted. You slowly shifted over to sit behind him, waiting to see if he’d flee. He didn’t. Tentatively placing your hands on his broad back, you started to knead his muscles through his cotton shirt. You worked out the knots in his shoulders and neck; you were rewarded with soft sighs and groans of relief as you dug your thumbs into a particularly bad knot near his right shoulder blade.

“This would be easier if you took your shirt off,” you grumbled.

Suddenly Arthur turned towards you, leaning forward, his face inches from yours.

“You teasin’ me, girl?”

“N-no, I just thought it’d be easier…” you trailed off when he got even closer to you, the tip of his nose grazing your cheek as he moved towards your neck. You leaned your head back, exposing your pulse to him, and he gently bit down on your soft skin, letting out a low growl.

You breathed his name like a supplication to a dark god, wanting to be consumed by the fire that ignited inside of you.

“Last chance. Tell me to stop.” He moved so he could look directly at you, and you swear you saw a golden glow in his eyes for a split second.

You leaned forward and kissed him.

A deep rumble came from his throat as he kissed you back. He pulled you into his embrace, his hands splayed out on your back. You broke away from the kiss to take a deep breath. Looking into his eyes, he gave you a steamy smile. You smiled shyly back.

"What big hands you have."

"The better to hold you with, darlin'." 

He gently nuzzled your lips with his before kissing you again, sweetly, lovingly. With each kiss, his passion grew. 

"What soft lips you have," you said, quivering, whether from fear or anticipation, you could no longer tell. 

"The better to kiss you with, my dear."

He grew more hungry for you as his mouth urged yours to open for him. He slipped his tongue inside and tasted you, a rumble of pleasure escaping his throat as he pressed harder against you. His warm body felt like heaven compared to the cold air coming from the cave entrance. As the rain fell, he started to unbutton your blouse, following each loosened button with a kiss to your exposed skin.

You were kneeling before him in just your chemise and riding skirt when he pulled away and took off his shirt. He was all muscles and scars, with a light dusting of hair on his chest. You placed your hands on his shoulders and traced the contours of his arms, admiring him. He watched you as you explored his body, placing kisses on his skin as you learned what this man felt like under your hands.

"Darlin', I want to taste you."

You looked at him quizzically, but he started to unbutton your riding skirt, so you helped him, removing all of your clothes under his heated gaze. He tenderly lay you down on the bed roll and spread your legs, settling himself between them. 

"What are you…?" you started to ask, but then all you could do was gasp as Arthur's tongue ran circles around your labia. With his hands caressing your skin, he worshipped you with his mouth, drawing out every sigh and moan from you with his greedy lips. 

As you grew wetter, he slipped a finger inside of you, slowly spreading you open for him. Soon another finger joined the first, and you were gripping his hair tightly as he sucked on your clit until you came, crying out with your hips jolting erratically. Arthur held you down, keeping you in his tight grasp until you had stilled, taking shuddered breaths.

"Looks like you enjoyed yerself," he teased with a wry grin. He licked his lips. “Delicious.”

Then he crawled further up your body, kissing the dip of your curves, the peaks of your breasts, the hollow of your neck. With his body hovering over yours, you realized how big he was compared to you, and you trembled slightly.

He held your face in his hands, looking at you with concern. You responded by putting your arms around his neck and wrapping your legs around his waist. 

“Ready?”

“Yes,” you whispered.

He reached down and guided himself inside of you, his intense stare threatening to make you faint as he slowly slid himself deeper and deeper until he was completely flush with your body, the heat radiating from him making you forget completely about the rain and the cold wind outside. Remaining still as he watched you take deep breaths, he gave you a minute to calm your frantically beating heart.

Then he lifted his hips up and slammed into you.

You cried out in surprise, but it was not an unpleasant feeling. Far from it, in fact. As he continued his rough thrusts, you clung to him tightly, murmuring his name like a prayer; you wanted more, you wanted to completely surrender to him. Leaning your head back, you exposed your neck and he kissed your soft skin once more, licking his way down to where your neck and shoulder met. 

Then he bit you. Hard.

Lost in the heat of his tumultuous desire, you didn’t register the mark he left on you as he pounded into you; the pain was confused for intense pleasure in your addled state, and you just grabbed at Arthur, letting out delicious cries of ecstasy.

“I want you on yer hands and knees, darlin’,” he growled, and pulled away from you, rearranging your body to his liking, with your legs spread and your ass in the air. He shoved himself back inside you, grabbing a handful of your hair and pulling you towards him, making your back arch as he took you once more with steady, rhythmic strokes.

“So beautiful,” he muttered, bending over to wrap an arm around your neck. He reached down with his other hand and stroked your clit. “Come for me again, I wanna feel you let go around me.”

He touched you mercilessly; unable to escape from him, you broke apart in his arms, losing control of your voice as you screamed to the heavens, his cock ravaging you as you spasmed around him. He let you down gently as he continued taking you, until your head was down on the bedroll, his hands on your back and neck, holding you down.

“My sweet darlin’,” he groaned, “Be mine.”

“Yes, yes, Arthur,” you breathed, signing over yourself to him mindlessly.

He let out a low, inhuman growl. Falling upon you, his body crushing yours, he continued to rut into you as he moved your hair to one side of your neck.

“Mine,” he snarled before he bit you once more, his teeth feeling sharper as he broke skin this time, a drop of blood snaking its way down your shoulder. Your senses grew sharper with the pain of his bite; you felt as if his cock was expanding inside you. And was he always this hairy?

Then the moment passed, and he growled as he came inside of you, pressing himself as hard as he could to your body, as if he wanted to meld with you and be a part of you forever.

“Sweet girl,” he whispered lovingly into your ear after a few moments. Then he rolled off of you, pulling you into his arms, and brushed the hair out of your face. Looking at you tenderly, he kissed your lips, the tip of your nose, and your forehead.

You looked at him through the afterglow haze, and blinked a few times. You swear his eyes were glowing a golden hue, and his features were strangely contorted, as if he had some lupine ancestry. But only for a second.

Resting your head against his chest, you fell asleep to the steady beat of his heart.

***

Waking up, you felt like you were sleeping in luxurious furs, wrapped up in warmth and comfort.

Then you blinked and looked up.

The wolf monster.

Except it wasn’t fair to call him a monster. He looked relaxed, like a dog having a good dream. His arms and legs were curled up protectively around you, his breathing deep and slow. His tail was twitching, the soft fur brushing against your legs.

Then he blinked his eyes open, languidly, like a predator waking up after a large meal.

“Arthur?”

His eyes shot wide open; you grew up with a dog, and you knew the look of fear when you saw it. He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.

You caressed his muzzle and cooed softly to him. “There now, don’t be afraid. It’s alright.”

He pushed his muzzle into your hands and closed his eyes, his ears dropping.

Then in the blink of an eye, a man lay next to you, his eyes open and full of love.

You had heard tales of the rougarou, werewolves cursed by witches near St. Denis, and had dismissed it all as nonsense. But now that proof was staring straight at you, you wondered what else was true.

“Were you cursed?” you asked.

“Or saved, however you want to look at it.” He paused for a moment, considering his next words. “A witch gave me this power when I was dyin’ on top of a mountain. Told me it weren’t my time yet.”

He held your hand against his cheek and turned to kiss the palm of your hand. “She said I’d find someone to devote myself to, and that I’d know them when I smelled them.” He leaned in closer to you, touching the tip of your nose with his. “She was right. You smell of wildflowers and honey, fresh rain and spring breezes, shootin’ stars and twilight.”

Your eyes watered, and you took a deep breath to calm your nerves. You just met him. This was insane.

But he had saved your life. And you couldn’t deny the feeling in your heart that swelled when you looked at him.

He reached for your hands and held them oh so gently in his big ones, as if you would break in his grasp. “I know this is sudden, but please, let me stay by your side.”

You found yourself nodding. How could you possibly say no, with him looking at you with the biggest puppy dog eyes?

His face lit up and he hugged you tight. 

“I’m yours, always,” he said into your hair as you held him back just as tightly, and all felt right with the world.

--------------------

End Notes: Yeah, I know, in A/B/O fics, golden eyes are signs of an omega, but for this fic, all wolves have golden eyes, and Arthur is 100% alpha. Also learned about the rougarou, a Cajun werewolf; since St. Denis is based on New Orleans, I thought this would be fun. @horsegirl1h, I’ve been feeding you teaser snippets this whole time, but I really hope you enjoyed how it all came together. Thank you for the request!

[bat-losers-inc]

Collisions in the Dark (Ch 23): Loose Position

Warnings: unhealthy relationships, unhealthy coping mechanisms, pstd.

Pairings: Jason Todd/Tim Drake

Summary: They’d shoved their trust issues and private wounds into that hazy ‘after’ area to deal with later, and Tim believed that for the most part they never really expected to arrive there. But they were there now and Tim floundered in the face of how to address those issues. Just because it’s over, Tim reminds himself, doesn’t mean everything suddenly goes back to normal.

Chapter Notes: Loose Position: A position vulnerable to opponent attacks because it is overextended or its pieces are uncoordinated.

______________________________________________________________________

“You said love is a synonym for damage. I said our bodies are a synonym for light. You told me, this isn’t sex. And I said I know, it’s whatever’s left.” — Missed Connections with Lonely Boys, Meggie Royer.

______________________________________________________________________

The plane shook with the rumble of thunder in the night sky and Tim awoke in his bed with his shirt clinging to his back and an icy chill covering him from head to toe like a blanket. Tim blinked out his bedroom window, orienting himself to his true surroundings— not caught in a storm running from Ra’s al Ghul and his men once again, but home. Safe. Or as safe as couldn't be expected.

The horrible flight home through stormy dark skies was days behind them now, but Tim still felt it like it was only yesterday. He was never really aware of much that happened that night after his fight with Ra’s to be honest, just the fiery pain in his dislocated shoulder. What he remembered was fractured sensations, unbound by time. Jason’s warm unmoving arms bracketing him. Damian’s knife sliding against his skin as he cut off away the fabric of Tim’s gloves to expose his injured hands. Cass’s insistent voice in his ear urging them not to fall asleep. Not yet.

Tim shifted out of his damp bed and traded his sweat-soaked shirt for a dry one. He glanced back at the mess of his covers before stepping out into the hall, deciding it’d be easier to find another place to sleep than to remake his bed in the middle of the night.

The library was quiet, except for the low whistle of wind from the cracked corner panes of the old windows. Tim’s skin broke out in gooseflesh at the abrupt change in temperature. A low fire burned in the fireplace though, so the cold wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. Tim dragged the leather couch closer to it to bring him some warmth.

He was pulling the blanket down off the back of the couch when he felt a change in the air behind him. Tim twisted and found himself standing there with his hand clenched tight around the person’s neck before he could even register what he was doing. When he did, however, Tim became aware of his own constricted breathing and Jason standing in front of him.

“Nightmare?” Jason asked even though Tim’s grip of his neck was tight enough to make the word a croak.

He didn't try to break Tim’s grip. Nor did he look frightened, seemingly confident in the knowledge that Tim wouldn’t hurt him. Tim just wished he would remember that he had hurt Jason, in more ways than one.

Jason touched his fingers lightly to the bones of Tim’s wrists.

“There was a storm… the plane crashed.”

Tim relaxed his grip into Jason’s warm fingers, remembering how Jason had done this once before in the car in Tibet. The way it took Jason ages before his fingers even touched Tim’s skin. So long that his anger and fear had time to cool, and eventually disappear, and he almost wanted to reach out for Jason himself. If only to feel him.

“ I didn’t expect to wake up,” he continued, “but when I did, everyone was gone. Everyone except him.”

Tim let his hand drop away all at once and went back to what he was doing.

Jason slid his hands around Tim’s back and pulled him against his chest. The blanket fell abandoned onto the couch cushions.

“Why didn’t you come to my room?”

Tim pressed his forehead hard against Jason’s breastbone and stared at the floor, trying to find the space to breathe freely.

He couldn’t.

Even standing safe in Jason’s arms he still felt like everything was too close for comfort, closing in on all sides to choke him. “I don’t know… we never really talked about ground rules for once it was all over and done with.”

Before and After.  

Tim felt the sharp line of that divide— where certain events and feelings in his life started and others stopped.  

Before the mission.

Before Ra’s.

After Jason told him that he loved him.

Before Jason’s death.

After Tim had lost his mind more than just a little bit.

They’d shoved their trust issues and private wounds into that hazy ‘after’ area to deal with later, and Tim believed that for the most part they never really expected to arrive there. But they were there now and Tim floundered in the face of how to address those issues.

“A part of me wasn’t sure if you’d want me to seek you out in the middle of the night,” he continued, “it felt like I was using you— to crawl into your bed after every bad nightmare without you doing the same. Another part of me wasn’t sure that I wanted to let that side of me win.”

“Win?” Asked Jason.

“The part of me that’s constantly screaming for me to kiss all of those bruises I’ve given you and make them better. That weak side of me that reminds me that it would be so much easier to say ‘I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again’ knowing that you love me enough to convince yourself that it's true—that you won't press the issue because you got me in the end so what does it matter anyway, right? And we’ll go on with our lives… sleep together, live together, fight together and all the time we’ll each be wondering: Did he really mean it or was that just another lie?”

How do we go about making amends for such horrible betrayals?

Tim wanted to ask Jason that same question he’d asked before Jason had walked out on him. Do you really hate me so much for what I did? But he knew the answer would still be the same. Just like his own feelings on Jason’s actions hadn't changed.

Jason uttered a noise filled with fatigue and despair. “Yeah… I understand that feeling all too well. I don't want to hate you, Tim. I can’t and yet I do and it's fucking torture to want you and not want you all at the same time.”

Tim pressed his laughter into the newly damp fabric of Jason’s shirt and held him tighter.

“Torture. Yeah, that’s what this is.”

He pressed his cheek against Jason’s chest. “What are we going to do, Jason?”

Jason slid the collar of Tim’s shirt away from his shoulder and pressed a kiss to the patch of bare skin he found there. “Take it one day at a time, I guess. So for tonight? Let go back to bed. I'm fucking exhausted.”

Tim smiled and allowed Jason to tug  him over to the library’s couch. Tim leaned back against Jason’s chest and pulled the blanket up over them both. The fire was warm against their backs and it provided enough light that if Tim tilted his head up, he could still catch the outline of Jason’s features in the orange glow. They didn’t talk to fill the silence. Instead, Jason tucked his chin into the crook of Tim’s neck and followed Tim into the quiet darkness of sleep.

______________________________________________________________________

One day at a time, it seemed, was asking too much of them and soon it was all they could do to take things one hour at a time. That sensation from before — of tiptoeing around the house and maintaining a safe distance, was gone—  but what replaced it almost felt worse. All of their tiptoeing had been for naught. The facade had cracked long before they’d drawn together in their final fight against Ra’s and now they’d returned home to find the broken pieces strewn about, each trying not to cut themselves on the jagged edges.

It seemed like the only words that left their mouths were apologies, and yet all of the apologies in the world weren’t enough.

Sometimes it was Tim who set Jason off and sometimes their roles reversed, but most of the time it presented itself in a horrible chain reaction of anger and injury that surged from one boy to the other. Like when Jason found the information that Tim and Damian had continued to compile on Gotham’s mercenaries for hire. Tim thought it had been bad when it was a private fight between the two of them, but then Jason had played dirty by bringing the information to Bruce— something that Tim hadn’t expected him to do in a million years. From there it had exploded into a civil war— their family breaking into factions. Damian and Cass— perhaps because on their own upbringings by mercenary families— backed Tim, agreeing that he had the right to do what he had to if it made him feel safe. While the rest of the family backed Jason’s mistrust of Gotham’s mercenaries and the likelihood that they could very well turn around and sell Tim to Ra’s if given a better offer. The ironic nature of Jason’s argument was not lost on Tim and he made sure to tell Jason exactly where he could shove his opinions on the subject.

______________________________________________________________________

Tim shoved upright in bed and doubled over trying to remind his lungs how to breathe. His fingers clutched tightly into the fabric of his t-shirt where it rested over his chest. Tears blurred his eyes and dripped onto his bedcovers.

He stared down at the dark blue fabric, seeing it but not seeing it.

The horrific images flashed before his eyes still—  in time with the bruising thump of his heart against the walls of his chest.

Tim heaved a breath. Jason spewed blood and something more onto his arms as Tim clutched him tightly against his chest.

He breathed out and pulled Jason’s drenched form out of Nyssa’s lazarus pit, knowing all the while that this wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

Another breath and Jason’s lifeless eyes stared up at him, the water running down the cold skin of his face like tears for the life he didn’t get back. A small dark voice in the back of Tim’s head whispered to him that it was okay, this was what Jason had wanted, after all.

Tim muffled his sobs with a first pressed against his mouth and curled inwards. “It isn’t real. It didn’t happen.”

He didn’t care if Jason hated him at the moment, or if they were currently having a fight. He knew he wouldn’t be able to calm himself down until he set his eyes on Jason breathing peacefully in his bed.

He tumbled out of his sheets and padded down the hall to Jason’s door.

“Jason?” He tried to smooth the roughness out of his voice as he stepped into the dark room.

Tim stared at Jason’s vacant bed for a moment, looking around like Jason was just out of sight, hiding by the window. He closed the door and walked to the library where they had spent the night together just a few days ago. The couch was back in it’s original place, the blanket folded neatly over its back.

Tim sucked in a shaky breath and sped up his pace until he was running down the hallways of the manor, slapping on lights and throwing open doors.

Tim was skidding around a corner in the kitchen, heading for the cave stairs when he caught sight of the garden lights on out of the corner of his eye. Motion sensored, he remembered all at once.

Tim threw open the french doors and stood gasping in the frosty midnight cold.

Jason turned around to face him and took a drag from the cigarette he held to his lips with a quavering hand. The tear tracks on his cheeks glistened under the outdoor lightning.

Tim threw himself against him and Jason rocked back on his heels with the blow, his arms coming up to wrap around him almost as an afterthought.

“You died,” The words came out as a wet sob against Jason’s breast. “You… died.”

Bruce had warned him long ago… back when Tim was still Robin, that sometimes after a tragedy you might think you’re fine and then all at once, when you’re least expecting it, the reality will just hit you. Tim had thought it had hit him a long ago, but now he realized this was the moment.

Jason pressed an equally wet kiss to the side of Tim’s forehead. “I know I did, honey.”

Tim felt Jason shake his head— a dark memory being shoved back to a far corner of Jason’s head, waiting for the time when it could push forward again behind his closed eyes. Except, it didn’t quite work. Halfway through the motion a choked breath slipped past Jason’s lips and before either of them knew it, Jason was turning away from him, his hands pressed hard against his wet eyes.

“I’d forgotten what it felt like… all alone in that cold darkness…” Jason turned back on him suddenly, full of undirected anger. “Fuck, Tim. Look at us! How are we supposed to be together and handle each other’s messes when we can’t even handle our own?”

Tim gave a disparaging laugh and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I honestly have no idea. It’s almost impossible for me to think outside of my own problems right now.... I’m sorry if that sounds cruel or selfish, or whatever…”

Jason wiped the wetness from his cheeks. “Don’t worry about it. I think we’ve earned the right to be a little selfish now and then.”

Tim stared at Jason in all his worn down glory, teary-eyed and shivering in the frosty dark. And he loved him, he couldn’t deny that. It felt like they were floating together through space, with no sounds except their breaths loud in their own ears, frosting the air in front of their faces.

All at once Tim shifted forward and wrapped his fingers around the back of Jason’s neck, pulling him down into a desperate kiss. Jason’s hands threaded tight into Tim’s hair and held the kiss until they were forced to pull back gasping.

Tim focused on Jason’s eyes, their lips still a breath apart from each other. “Tonight, if you want to, I’d like to try not to be selfish. I’d like to show you how much I love you.”

Jason captured his lips in another kiss and breathed him in; the tears, the sweat, the scent of his shampoo. Tim couldn’t fathom what he liked about him in that moment, but Jason smiled.

“You sure?”

The most Tim could manage was a shaky nod, though Jason wasn’t looking so strong and stable himself at the moment. “C'mon. It's cold out here.”

[izaswritings]

Title: raindrop melodies

Synopsis: A hollow victory and new sense bring Hyakkimaru to a revelation. Family is what you make of it. (Set during/after episode 4).

AO3 Link is here!

-

The fight is over and Hyakkimaru has won, but for once the victory tastes hollow on his tongue.

Even though all the red has faded and demon is gone, Hyakkimaru still has the nagging sense that he’s lost. He doesn’t know how, or why, but he can sense it. He’s missed something, or maybe just stumbled into a situation where every choice is doomed to end in failure. There was nothing else to do but play along, and now they are all left in the aftermath.

The whole day has felt like this, Hyakkimaru reflects, a little bitter. One of those days. The kind of day where nothing goes as planned. It had started peacefully enough—there had been something soothing about waking early and standing in the rain—but the peace hadn’t lasted. From the moment that stranger’s soul had stumbled into view and faded away, dead at the hand of a demonic blade… well. Everything else had just gone downhill from there.

Figures. I finally find something enjoyable about having a sense of touch, and the demons attack me immediately after.

It’s like some sort of cosmic joke, except Hyakkimaru isn’t laughing.

Even now, hours later, he still aches from the day’s events. The cut across his cheek, received hours ago, sends painful tingles of stinging pain whenever the rain hits it. His shoulders are sore from the strain of fighting, pulled taut from harsh blocks and painful maneuvers. His leg, too—Hyakkimaru has used that trick before, using his prosthetics as a way to buy himself the advantage, but he’s never had to live with the aftermath until now. As it turns out, ripping off his prosthetic hurts. Jukai had crafted the limbs special for him, well-fitted and snug so that the wood would hold through all of Hyakkimaru’s childish stunts and more serious fights, which means tearing his leg off is… ugh. 

‘Inadvisable’ is probably putting it likely.

It’s funny, really. Funny in a sort of ironic way, if he thinks about it. All these things Hyakkimaru has known of but never known, and something as simple as having a sense of pain has cast everything in a whole new light… or perhaps just a whole new depth.

This, too, is yet another learning experience. Sound—and, Hyakkimaru thinks, even without ever having a reference for it, he’s almost positive this is what the new sensation must be—sound is something else to adjust to. It’s just one final blow to cap off this whole awful experience, really: losing his leg, having to swing his sword at Dororo, killing a human soul and watching the pale fire flicker and fade. And now, this—  sound, in all its terrible glory.

And it is terrible, Hyakkimaru thinks. It’s horrible. It’s a roar unlike anything Hyakkimaru has ever experienced, a sensation that shakes his bones and makes his head feel as if it’s splitting in two, his ears popping and pain lacing behind his eyes. There’s just—so much. Too much. The rumble that rings in his head like fever heat made sound; the drumming of the rain against his skin become soundtrack; the shaking and shuddering flame of the other soul, the one who had taken Hyakkimaru and Dororo in for the night, now accompanied by a broken and stuttering wail that tears at Hyakkimaru’s heart.

Sound, he thinks. This must be sound. This roar, this pain, this drumming. That shattered and cracking thing that pierces his ears and his heart— 

Hyakkimaru understands sadness. He knows tears. To his sight, grief is a shaky flicker of a white soul, a fluttering that seems almost fragile. In his experience, tears are the quiet itch behind his eyes, heavy and thick like blood. And while he has known, by guess, that crying is not noiseless… for the first time, Hyakkimaru hears it. This ghastly, grating sound—soft and deep, as if dredged up from the soul itself, echoing louder than even the hissing static of the storm.

I did that, Hyakkimaru thinks. I did that. He knows he did. He must have. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had. The soul—they wouldn’t stop. They just wouldn’t stop, and so Hyakkimaru had stopped them instead.

Dororo had kept trying to pull away from the sword, kept trying not to fight—which had nearly given Hyakkimaru a heart attack of his own, when he’d swung down expecting his blade to be parried and nearly took off Dororo’s head instead. But still, the fact remains: Dororo had tried not to fight. But this other soul…

This other soul had taken the blade willing. This soul’s white fire had flared, not quite red but for a moment almost seeming to reflect the same demonic light of the sword. This soul—this other soul had not stopped, and so Hyakkimaru had steeled his own heart and cut them down.

He had cut them down, and now he can hear the crying.

Hyakkimaru exhales, soft and shuddering, tilting his head up to the sky. The rain patters on his face, still pleasant; the drumming in his ears is less so. It hurts. His head is already aching, and this wall of noise isn’t helping. He wants nothing more than to lift his hands and cover his new ears, block the sound as much as he possibly can.

He wants to, but instead Hyakkimaru keeps his hands where they are, limp and loose and useless by his side. He did this. This sound, this awful cry: he’s caused this.

He’s tired, suddenly. Not really sad, not really upset, just… tired. He feels as if the world has suddenly fallen down hard on his shoulders. It takes all he has just to keep his face turned up to the sky.

What would Jukai say, if he could see Hyakkimaru now? He had never liked when Hyakkimaru fought demons. What would he think, to see…?

There’s an itch behind his glass eyes, and Hyakkimaru breathes in slow and shuddering, fighting against the urge to grit his teeth. His wooden fingers flex and twitch at the sudden tension in his shoulder blades. He can hear his own breath—a strange inner sound of air through his teeth. It’s awful. It’s so loud. It’s something he’ll never be able to escape, and worst of all… Hyakkimaru can still hear the crying. 

A quiet pressure, a tug on his right prosthetic, brings Hyakkimaru’s head back down. Dororo is there—awake again, one soul-fire hand clutching the fingers of Hyakkimaru’s prosthetic. A soft and breathy babble breaks through the air—close but quiet, not as painful as everything else—and Dororo tugs at Hyakkimaru’s prosthetic again, as if to pull him along.

Another wave of incomprehensible noise washes over him, the same strange high tones. Dororo? Is this Dororo, then? Is this their voice? Is this what they sound like? Their voice is—Hyakkimaru’s not sure. Young, he thinks. Is this what the young sound like? Soft and breathy and cracking, like the snap of thin green twigs, if that feeling could be translated into sound.

Hyakkimaru looks back down at Dororo, to the source of that soft babbling, that quieter sound that distracts from the crying—and when Dororo steps away, tugging insistently at his arm, Hyakkimaru lets himself be led. He’s too tired to pull away, to want to pull away. If Hyakkimaru had his way he would stand still until the pain and the noise faded away, but then—it probably never will. This is his world now, sound forcefully included, another painful shift in perception that Hyakkimaru cannot escape.

He’s so tired.

But Dororo pulls at his hands and the babbling rises in pitch, wavering, and in his sight he can see Dororo’s soul shivering a little, almost distressed—and so Hyakkimaru goes. He lets Dororo lead him away from the shaking soul and that awful grieving sound, lets the soft-packed mud of the village roads give way to the softer forest paths beneath his bare foot. Hyakkimaru leaves the village and that sound behind, but the echo lingers in his ears.

Dororo squeezes his hand, the pressure pulling at the joint connecting Hyakkimaru’s arm to his shoulder. They’re pulling Hyakkimaru forward, still moving at a brisk pace, but their grip has shifted, less leading and more just… holding. They squeeze at Hyakkimaru’s hand again, and falter in their steps, walking beside instead of in-front, as if trying to hide against his side.

A quiet mutter rises above the drip of rainwater. Dororo clutches at Hyakkimaru’s hand a little tighter. The babble rises again— sharper, more petulant. It matches the sudden waiver of their soul. This is for you, not me, Dororo seems to be saying. I don’t need your comfort.

But they stick by Hyakkimaru’s side regardless.

Hyakkimaru looks at Dororo and feels a warmth flicker to life in his chest, something quiet and small. He twists the prosthetic hand in Dororo’s grip, and twitches his fingers around that small palm, a mimicry of Dororo’s own hold.

Hyakkimaru is tired, drained, overwhelmed. But the world is little easier to swallow, out here in the comforting blankness of the woods, and Dororo is still by his side—safe, unharmed, and still moving, with that same rapid brightness that is so characteristic to their small soul. Dororo seems subdued, but the brightness hasn’t faded. They’re okay. Despite today, they’re still okay.

Hyakkimaru’s knowledge of family is limited—Jukai is the only family Hyakkimaru has ever known; the only family he has ever cared to have. But he thinks—maybe—maybe Dororo counts, too. Maybe Dororo is family. Someone little, someone who follows at his heels and waves for his attention—someone a bit like a younger sibling, or at least similar to what Hyakkimaru has always imagined little siblings to be like.

Hyakkimaru holds Dororo’s hand best he can. The world is roaring in his ears, his body aches like an old bruise, and the memory of that soul’s wailing is still ringing loud in his head—  

But Dororo is by his side, and Hyakkimaru is not alone.

It’s enough.

[galwednesday]

So back in the summer 2016, I wrote 18k of an immediately post-CA:TWS Shrinkyclinks AU with the working title The Lion and the Mouse, then got distracted and mostly abandoned it. When I was writing Bait and Switch, I stole the concept of how Steve and Bucky met from this WIP, not thinking much about it because I wrote Bait and Switch quickly and didn’t expect to go anywhere with it. Except then people asked for more, and specifically the story of how they met, with Steve saving Bucky from an attempted mugging. Which I, uh, stole. From myself.

I’m doing some writing file clean-out today and when I looked at The Lion and the Mouse I discovered the first 4,000 words are almost entirely complete, up to and including the part where Steve and Bucky meet, so I’m posting it here. This isn’t in the same universe as Bait and Switch, but it’s what I was thinking of when I was writing their character dynamics, and I thought it might interest people who had asked for Bait and Switch’s thwarted-mugging scene.

“Have we met?” Iron Man asked. “Because I gotta say, there’s something familiar about you. But that awesome cyborg arm, which, by the way, you should stop trying to punch me with, I would definitely have remembered, so--” Iron Man failed to dodge the Asset’s grab and was thrown upside-down into the wall of the helicarrier. He stuck there for a moment before falling face-first onto the floor. “Maybe not.”

The Asset scaled the closest ladder in under three seconds. Iron Man was a distraction, not the primary target.

The Asset climbed onto the catwalk and ran towards the Widow. She was ignoring the fight behind her, too busy tampering with something on the control panel.

Targeting system, a dispassionate voice in the Asset’s head supplied. The Asset disregarded the thought as irrelevant. It couldn’t help deducing information based on passive observation, but it had never been encouraged to know more than it was told.

It threw a knife at the Widow’s back. She moved impossibly quickly, turning so the knife passed harmlessly to one side, but that brought her nearly within the Asset’s reach. The Asset lunged forward--

Iron Man lurched over the edge of the catwalk and slammed into the Asset’s side, knocking them both down to the lowest level of the helicarrier, the glass underbelly. The ground drifted past deceptively slowly beneath them. The helicarrier was riding low enough that the Asset could see river water quaking from the repulsor engines’ vibrations.

(continues beyond the cut)

“We’re not done, terminator.” Iron Man tried to pin the Asset’s left wrist, but the Asset had already torn off one of his gauntlets and his one-handed grip wasn’t strong enough. The Asset locked its thighs around Iron Man’s waist and threw its body into a twist. Iron Man rolled with the spin and fired his remaining hand repulsor to gain extra momentum, trying to break free of the Asset’s grip.

The repulsor blast must have hit an already damaged support pillar. One moment the Asset was rolling Iron Man onto the floor like a beetle onto its back, and the next the Asset was stunned and gasping, lying face-up and pinned by a metal beam across its abdomen and chest. The beam was too heavy to lift. The Asset was trapped.

“And the Soldier’s finally down. Jesus.” Iron Man pulled his booted foot free of the fallen beam and staggered upright. “Romanoff, you good?”

“Swap made.” The Widow’s voice was light. “We have seven minutes until the fireworks start.”

“Great.” Iron Man shook his foot, the boot repulsor flickering on and off like a dying lightbulb. “I’m down to one and a half repulsors, so if I’m piggybacking you out of here it’s going to get pretty bumpy.”

Their earpieces crackled, a woman’s voice talking about a helicopter en route. The Asset didn’t bother to listen.

Mission failure. Fear washed through the Asset, cryo-cold. Mission failures were unacceptable. It must not fail the mission.

The Asset braced its elbows against the floor. It set its boots flat against the glass below and pushed up with its hips, ignoring the screaming agony spiraling through its abdomen.

“Easy there, tough guy, you’re going to rupture something. Correction, JARVIS tells me you have ruptured several somethings, and now you’re making it worse. Hill, better send paramedics with the chopper if you want the Soldier to live long enough for interrogation.”

Interrogation sent another pulse of terror down the Asset’s spine. It could remain silent despite almost anything, had been given plenty of practice, but interrogation was never easy to endure.

“You know, you really do look familiar.” Iron Man’s head tilted and his faceplate popped up. He narrowed his eyes at the Asset’s face. “JARVIS, run facial recognition on our party crasher.”

The Asset automatically noted that Iron Man was now vulnerable to a throwing knife to the eye, but both its hands were occupied and killing Iron Man wouldn’t salvage the mission. Mission failure mission failure mission failure.

The Widow appeared over the edge of the gangplank. She took in the situation at a glance and gave Iron Man an exasperated look. “For God’s sake, Stark. Keep your faceplate down until the Soldier is disarmed.” For a moment the Asset saw that same face, with the same annoyed line between her eyebrows, but smaller and rounder. A little girl’s pout laid over eyes that were decades too old.

Malfunction, the Asset thought.

Iron Man didn’t seem to hear her. His head snapped back to face the Asset, his eyes widening. “What? JARVIS, repeat that.”

The whine of its arm’s servos increased in pitch as the Asset strained harder. Fire radiated out from its sternum as additional ribs fractured under the pressure. The beam didn’t move.

The panel of glass beneath the Asset did.

The panel separated from one side of its metal housing with a sharp crack. The Asset watched the gap grow wider by inches, slow but inexorable. The seam was going to fail, and the Asset was going to fall.

The Asset stopped pushing against the beam, letting its body go lax against the slowly shifting glass. There was no way to prevent it. And it was fitting, somehow, that the Asset should die by falling.

The Asset didn’t know why. The Asset knew a lot of things without knowing how it knew them.

Iron Man didn’t notice the panel sagging. His eyes, brown and heavy-browed and incomprehensibly familiar, stared at the Asset’s face.

“Sergeant Barnes?”

The glass gave way.

The Asset fell.

Before it hit the water, words formed somewhere in the whirling chaos behind the Asset’s eyes, shaping themselves in accordance with a long-forgotten accent.

Fuckin’ finally.

[[PROBABLY A CHAPTER BREAK]]

The Asset hadn’t expected to survive the fall. The shock of water closing over its head prompted its body to struggle automatically, kicking towards the light in search of oxygen. Once it was breathing and treading water, extraction training kicked in.

The Asset dragged itself to shore and wove a muddy trail through the parks and back alleys of the city, concealing its passage on autopilot. It tore a strip off its undershirt to tie over the bullet wound in its thigh. Pursuers might have sniffer dogs. The Asset must avoid leaving a blood trail.

Iron Man’s parting words played on repeat. Sergeant Barnes? There was something right-but-not-right about Iron Man’s face, about the Widow’s face, something known-but-not-known. Stark, she had called him. His face, his voice, that name, Sergeant Barnes? The Asset’s head buzzed with dissonance.

The Asset didn’t expect to survive the confrontation with its handlers. The Asset had already known it was scheduled for decommissioning. The technicians routinely forgot how acute its hearing was and discussed forbidden topics where the Asset couldn’t help but overhear; it never drew attention to this in case it was punished for listening. The Asset had known before it even reached the helicarrier that this was to be its final mission. Its failure just proved the handlers right. It had grown unstable, erratic, ineffective. The Asset was a tool that had outlived its usefulness.

The Asset reported in because that was how all the its missions ended, and it didn’t know to do anything different in case of mission failure, but it wouldn’t have surprised the Asset to be greeted with a bullet to the brain as soon as it walked into the bank.

Instead, the five technicians in the vault nearly pissed themselves when the Asset appeared, silent as ever even though it couldn’t stand fully upright. Most of the broken ribs were on its right side where the beam had struck. Its abdomen felt worse than the the ribs, or the gunshot wound in its left thigh, but the Asset could feel its body already working to repair the damage. Soft tissue damage healed quickly. It would survive these injuries, if it was allowed to.

“M-mission report,” one of the technicians stammered. That wasn’t proper procedure, handlers were the ones who debriefed the Asset, but there were no handlers present to report to.

The Asset gave its report anyway. Anticipation of punishment was worse than pain, and it didn’t want to wait. It was going to be decommissioned anyway. What was a protocol violation compared to the mission failure it was about to recount?

The Asset’s summary of events made the technicians draw together in a frightened huddle. Two of them kept glancing at the door, either hopeful or worried about who might come through next. Another, the quietest and calmest, snuck two quick looks at the bulletin board the Asset knew concealed a wall safe containing cash and emergency supplies. The other two appeared to be in a state of shock.

“Fuck,” one whispered when the Asset finished. “The news was right. Shit, oh shit.”

“Does that mean Pierce is really dead?”

“The STRIKE teams haven’t checked in. If they were on the helicarriers--”

“They must be dead, too. Or arrested.”

“Christ, look at all these files.” One technician was at a computer, her face frantic as she typed. “They released everything. Everything.”

“What about this address? Is this base burned?”

“Fuck, forget about the base, what about our addresses? Our names?”

“Stop trying to grab the keyboard, look on your own fucking computer!”

The technicians bickered while the Asset stood against the wall. Nobody had told it to do anything else.

The wait gave its ribs time to knit back together. The searing pain in its abdomen lessened, slowly fading into the deep ache of bruising instead of the acute fire of rupture. The Asset was extremely thirsty, but nobody had given it water. The gunshot wound in its thigh reopened as its body worked to expel the embedded bullet. Eventually the bullet dropped down its pant leg, resting on the top of its boot.

Its mind rattled. It hurt, conflicting thoughts grinding against each other, forbidden memories and whistling gaps. The chair would scrape the confusion away, but the chair--

The Asset didn’t like the chair.

The quietest technician wasn’t searching for information like the others. He was sitting at his desk, thinking, watching the other technicians. Watching the Asset. Sweat gathered at his temples and darkened his hair.

The Asset tracked his movements when the quiet technician pulled a pistol from a desk drawer.

The other technicians were facing away, arguing among themselves and distracted by their computers. Easy targets.

The armed technician killed the others. He was fast and fairly professional about it, needing no more than three bullets per target before they stayed down, but it was loud and messy all the same. The shots echoed in the enclosed space despite the vault’s sound-proofing, bleeding into one staccato cacophony.

The Asset watched silently as the technician swallowed hard and readjusted his grip on the pistol. He lowered it to his side.

“Asset,” the technician said. He pulled the bulletin board off the wall. “Open this safe.”

The Asset didn’t know the combination of the safe, but it was an older model and had never been built to stand up to a weapon like the Asset’s arm. One heave on the door handle pulled the entire safe from its wall housing. The movement reopened the Asset’s wounds, sending more acid through its abdomen and a rush of hot blood down its thigh, but the pain wasn’t mission relevant. It could be ignored.

The Asset threw the safe across the room. It smashed corner-first into the reinforced vault door and burst open, spilling its contents onto the floor.

“Jesus Christ! You crazy fucker.” The technician glared at the Asset. “There are grenades in there, fuck.”

The Asset felt a little indignant. The technician should have included this information in the mission briefing if he felt it was relevant. The watching part of the Asset, the part that eavesdropped on handlers and kept its conclusions to itself, thought that the technician was a poor substitute for a handler. He didn’t observe the proper protocols. Probably didn’t know the proper protocols.

Running scared, the watching part Asset thought. Pierce was dead. The STRIKE teams were dead or captured. Hydra’s files had been released to the world. Low-level Hydra agents would be running scared.

If there was one emotion the Asset could reliably recognize, one pattern of behavior it could predict, it was fear.

Who was authorized to command the Asset, with Pierce and Rumlow out of commission? Who was authorized to punish the Asset for mission failure? Who would issue corrections for disobedience?

The watching part of the Asset unfurled and stretched.

The technician glanced up from where he was kneeling by the safe, scooping bundled papers and bricks of cash into a paper bag. He jerked his chin at the Asset’s thigh, which was still oozing blood. “Can you fight with that?”

It was a stupid question. The Asset’s internal ruptures were far more limiting to mission performance than a mostly-healed flesh wound. But the technician had never ordered the Asset to report its full status, so he was unaware of the extent of the damage. Not a handler, the Asset reminded itself. Its pulse picked up with an emotion it couldn’t identify, something like the feeling of checking weapons before a firefight.

“Functional for moderate combat,” the Asset reported. It added, because the technician was clearly not going to think of it on his own, “Rehydration necessary.”

The technician took a coffee cup from one of the desks, filled it from the water cooler in the corner, and pressed it into the Asset’s hands. The Asset drained it quickly before it could be taken away. The water was cool and pleasantly tasteless, much better than the noxious river water it had swallowed earlier or the nutrient IVs it was usually given. Evidently there were advantages to not having a real handler.

The technician looked at the chair and frowned. The Asset’s grip on the coffee mug tightened, but the technician was a cryo specialist. He didn’t know how to use the chair, and he had just killed the technicians that did.

“Fuck it,” the technician muttered. He grabbed the bags of cash and weapons and jerked his head at the door. “Asset, move out.”

***

The technician waved the Asset into the passenger’s seat of one of the field vans, not the black one that rode heavy with armor plating, but the white one with “RUSTY’S PLUMBING - RESULTS GUARANTEED!” painted on its side in big, looping letters. He put the bags of cash and weapons into the back and tucked his pistol into a holster hidden under his blue windbreaker. He put on a headset and connected it to his phone before he started driving, pulling onto I-95 and heading north.

“Buckle your seat belt,” the technician ordered. The Asset complied. It was good to ride in the front of a vehicle, with a full range of vision for upcoming obstacles or threats. The trees lining the highway were pleasant to look at. The Asset occupied itself by memorizing the license plate of every car they passed.

The technician received a call after 22 minutes of driving.

“What?” the technician demanded. “No, I told you. Get the STRIKE teams out of lockup and meet me at the rendezvous in Trenton. Blow up the building if you have to, just stop them from getting transferred to somewhere more secure.” A pause, then the technician slammed his palm onto the top of the steering wheel. “Fuck your cover! Are you even listening to me? I cleaned out the base in D.C. I have the Asset. Shit, that’s enough to start a new cell right there. Your cover’s blown already. All our covers are blown, once they decode those files.” Another, longer pause. “Do whatever you have to do. Report in three hours.” The technician yanked off his headset and slumped back in his seat. “Fucking moron.”

The technician listened to the radio the entire drive, sometimes swearing or punching the dashboard as news anchors revealed a new piece of information. The Asset sat silently without giving any sign that it registered what was being said.

The radio gave names for Iron Man and the Black Widow: Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff. The names were right-but-wrong just like the faces.

Sergeant Barnes. The news didn’t mention that name. The news didn’t mention the Asset at all, although it had a lot to say about Alexander Pierce and Nick Fury and SHIELD and Hydra and Natasha Romanov and Tony Stark. The Asset rolled the names through its mind, lost in thought. Tony Stark. Sergeant Barnes. Natasha Romanoff. Natasha, Natashenka, Nat…

The Asset couldn’t arrive at the correct name, but Nat recalled a child with red hair and a killer’s eyes. The Black Widow’s face in miniature.

Malfunction, the Asset thought automatically. It hadn’t been wiped in more than nine days, far longer than standard protocol. One of the technicians had complained to a handler about it and had been overruled. The Asset’s initial assassination of Fury, Nicholas J. had spawned unexpected, urgent follow-up missions as Hydra’s maneuvers were countered by SHIELD loyalists, and Rumlow had wanted the Asset to be field-ready at a moment’s notice.

Wipes kept mission-irrelevant memories at bay. The Asset was to report unauthorized memories to its handler at once, so the distractions could be properly removed.

The Asset had no handlers left to report to. The Asset said nothing. The watching part of the Asset approved. It wanted to wait and see what would happen.

The Asset was very good at waiting.

They stopped in Pennsylvania, just shy of the border with New Jersey. The technician left the Asset in the car while he pumped gas. Once the tank was full, the technician hovered by the car for a few moments, then opened the passenger-side door.

“Out,” the technician ordered. “We’re going inside. Stay behind me. Don’t say anything. Got it?”

“Confirm.” Standing up was a mix of pleasurable stretching of cramped muscles and painful pulling on wounds that hadn’t quite healed. The Asset’s abdomen felt hot and tender but essentially sound. Its thigh wound had closed and was forming scar tissue that would fade away within a week. The Asset could fight if it had to; it had pushed through injuries that were much worse.

The gas station was empty apart from a clerk at the desk who glanced up at the technician and the Asset, then went back to reading her magazine. The Asset shadowed the technician’s footsteps, taking a perverse pleasure in hiding in the technician’s blind spot, so the technician was constantly turning his head to catch sight of it. Malfunction, the Asset thought, just a little more smug than wary. The technician wasn’t a handler. The technician could hurt the Asset in the course of regular maintenance, when the Asset’s pain was incidental, but he didn’t have the authority to discipline it.

Whoever the technician was taking the Asset to might have that authority. Sobered by the thought, the Asset dropped back a few more paces. The radio had claimed that Alexander Pierce was dead, but there were others. There were always others.

[[TV playing in the corner shows driver’s license photos of suspected Hydra personnel that includes the technician; he sees the store clerk recognize him]]

“Shit,” the technician hissed, face twisting. He pulled his gun from the small of his back.

The clerk froze in place, her mouth opening in shock.

The Asset moved without knowing it was going to. Its flesh hand snatched the gun from the technician’s grip. The technician’s head snapped back as the Asset’s metal fist collided with its chin. The Asset heard the crack of bone.

The cashier screamed.

The technician was dead before he hit the floor.

The Asset separated the clip from the gun, set both of them on the floor, and left the gas station at a sprint.

[[disables tracker and whatever drug ampoules he can reach, manages to backtrack to Philly before collapsing to ride out the withdrawal]]

The Asset hadn’t expected to survive coming down from whatever drugs Hydra had used to keep it docile and compliant. At the worst stage of the withdrawal, when it was shaking, puking, and hallucinating in the basement of a condemned building, it had wished it was back in cryo, numb and frozen and not hurting. It would even have gone to the chair.

Two days later, it had crawled out of the basement, filthy and exhausted but more clear-headed than it could ever remember being.

The Asset was starting to feel a certain kinship with cockroaches.

The Asset spent more than a month just keeping low, moving only through shadows and sleeping once every three days, curling up on rooftops and in flophouses. Hydra didn’t find it. SHIELD didn’t find it. The Asset wasn’t sure there was any difference between the two, no matter what the radio had said, but either way, it wanted to avoid the interrogation Stark’s words had promised.

The Asset ruminated on Romanoff and Stark. It thought maybe Romanoff had been a fellow asset, and Stark had been a technician. Or maybe Stark was a stranger and Romanov an enemy. The Asset couldn’t decide, couldn’t seem to settle on a conclusion.

Neither of them had been a handler. The Asset was sure of that. Hydra had burned the memories of past missions out of its head, but they had made sure the Asset’s ability to recognize its betters was crystal fucking clear.

The Asset’s head ached constantly. Sometimes the pain was just a mild inconvenience, and sometimes it was incapacitating. It wasn’t clear whether to the Asset whether its brain was healing, or just turning to mush. The Asset had been eating mostly from trash cans. Its memories were incomplete at best, but it was certain people didn’t used to throw away so much food. Bruised fruit, stale bread, half-eaten hamburgers. Finding enough to sustain itself hadn’t been difficult.

The hand’s fingers did not open or close. The Asset had opened the forearm access panel and ripped out whatever it could reach, knowing that one of the components was a tracker and unable to distinguish which one. It had felt like fire burning up through the arm and into the shoulder, radiating agony down its back and up its neck into its skull, before the nervous system feedback had, mercifully, shorted out. The Asset could still raise the arm and rotate it at the elbow and shoulder, but the wrist and hand joints were locked in place.

It took weeks for the Asset to form anything approaching a plan. Taking care of basic needs like thirst and hunger were instinctual enough that the Asset could do them on autopilot, but it was out of the habit of thinking for itself.

[[Heads to Brooklyn like a homing pigeon; has vague memories of safety and belonging there. When he arrives, wanders disconsolately looking for where he used to live (without knowing that’s what he’s looking for), but can’t find it. The closest he can find is an alley, where he tries to sleep.]]

The Asset had been asleep with its head on the backpack. Tactical error. One of the boys must have pulled the backpack out by its straps. Now the backpack was four feet away, at the largest boy’s feet.

The three boys had frozen when the Asset swung upright, but as seconds passed while the Asset did nothing but stand rigidly still, they relaxed.

“Woah, easy there,” one of them said. He took a few steps away and looked at the mouth of the alley, either checking for pursuers or scouting an escape route.

“Relax, he’s just a fucking junkie,” the largest boy said quietly. Then, louder, “What’s in the backpack, man? You gonna share?”

The boy crouched beside the backpack, reaching for the zipper.

The Asset could kill him so easily, even with one malfunctioning hand. The steps were as clear as a roadmap: immobilize shoulder, grasp head, twist, drop. It would take less than a second.

The thought made its stomach churn. The Asset held itself rigid, every muscle locked in place, afraid that moving would lead to another body at its feet.

“Hey!” A new boy, his hair startlingly bright in the gloom of the alley, charged forward from the alley’s other end. He stepped in between the Asset and the threat and puffed up like an angry goose. His baggy coat and overstuffed backpack made him appear larger than his thin legs suggested he was. “Leave him alone!”

“Alex,” the third boy muttered, tugging on the largest boy’s sleeve. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Alex shrugged the hand off. He was half a foot taller than the boy standing challengingly in front of him. “We were just talking. What’s it to you?”

“You need to leave,” the blond boy said, voice hard. “You can’t just take people’s stuff.”

“Fuck you, I’ll go when I want to,” Alex retorted. “And I want to see what’s in the backpack first.”

Alex reached for the backpack’s zipper, but the blond boy slapped his hand away before he could touch it.

Enraged, Alex drew back his fist.

The Asset moved.

Alex’s punch landed full force on the Asset’s metal arm, sending a ringing vibration through its shoulder. Alex howled and pulled his hand back to his chest.

“You fucking--”

“Come on, Alex!” the second boy shouted. The third was already running. Alex let himself be pulled out of the alley, and within seconds the Asset was alone with the blond boy.

On closer inspection, the boy wasn’t a boy at all. He was short, no more than five and a half feet, but his voice was deep and his face had no trace of baby fat. The Asset estimated the man was in his mid-twenties.

“Sorry you had to deal with those guys,” the man said. He took a few steps back, leaving the Asset standing over its backpack. “I know one of them, he’s not so bad, but his cousin is a total dick. Are you all right? That sounded like a pretty hard punch." The man reached out and ran both hands up the Asset's left arm. The Asset didn't allow itself to flinch away.

The man’s hands squeezed gently, paused, squeezed more firmly. "Wow, that's--" His eyes went wide and his hands dropped away from the arm. He held them spread at chest height for a moment, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have grabbed your arm without asking. That was not okay, geez."

The Asset had no idea what was going on, but the man seemed upset, which made it nervous. Things didn’t go well when people around the Asset were upset.

It slowly picked up the backpack. When the man didn't do anything but watch, the Asset settled the backpack straps over its shoulders, feeling more secure.

The man reached his pocket and the Asset tensed. It calculated the hang of the jacket and the size of the pocket bulge automatically; not heavy enough for a gun, but a knife could be small and light, or a taser--

He pulled out a rectangle wrapped in blue foil. "Are you hungry? I have an energy bar. It's, uh." He flipped the bar over and squinted in the dim light. "Blueberry lemon flavored. You want any?"

The man half-unwrapped the bar and handed it to the Asset. The Asset took it and bit, tentatively. It was chalky and sweet. Blueberry lemon, it thought, memorizing the taste.

“Not bad, right?" the man said. "That was my last one, sorry. Are you still hungry?"

The Asset knew better than to admit to a weakness, but the man seemed to know anyway. He just kept talking.

"I know a church near here that has food, usually, and a place to sleep if you don't mind waking up with the bells. We could go there now, if you want."

The Asset thought about this. It had to sleep somewhere, and evidently the alley wasn’t safe. The blond man wasn't a threat. If the church was a trap, the Asset could run.

The Asset nodded, and the man smiled.

"Great! It's a little over a mile, are you okay to walk that? Oh!" He smacked his forehead, making the Asset startle. "I forgot to introduce myself, sorry. My name's Steve."

SO THAT’S WHAT I GOT. I have about 14,000 more words of this story written, so either I’ll finish it and post it as a complete fic or I’ll officially give up and post it somewhere as a morgue file.

[rambling-at-midnight]

Hacked: Part 10

“Nice bathroom,” he says casually, fiddling with his jacket as if you don’t have a gun on him. “Sorry, I think I clogged the toilet, though. Couldn’t help myself.”

“Hands in the air,” you snap, refusing to let the man in front of you get the best of you. Though he does put his hands in the air, you feel as if you’ve just lost the upper hand. You push aside your nerves and doubts. You’d decided not to go out looking for this man, but he’d wandered directly into your territory, which was a stupid move. You’re not letting him leave.

“I can’t believe Underoos didn’t recognize you for who you were,” he smirks. “We look nearly identical.”

You expand your mask again so he can’t see the nerves on your face, or just your face in general. You’d just gotten comfortable here, but his presence has jarred you, made it seem like he’d ripped a curtain off of everything and it was just a play instead of real life. “Give me one good reason not to put a bullet in your head right now,” you snarl, but the butterflies in your stomach are doing choreographed dance numbers. When you turn your head, the mask pulls at your hair. It’d pulled your hair up into its own ponytail since it was down, but some strands must be caught between the seams of the metal.

“Why should you need a reason not to?” he asks casually, folding his hands behind his head. It’s technically all right with what you told him to do, but you have a bad feeling about that action.

“Hands where I can see them,” you correct.

He chuckles, “Damn, you’re good,” and complies.

You cock the gun, noticing how he doesn’t even twitch, and gesture to the living room. “One wrong movement and you’ll have steel in the back of your head,” you warn, and he nods. When he does get into the living room, he doesn’t even look at Pom, Dennis, and Juna, who are all guarded, and opts to just stare out the window.

“Juna, get Stick,” you say tersely, not motioning with your gun. This room is more open and you don’t feel as safe in it as yours, even though you’ve got your friends in here with you, all with their own guns trained on the man. The little girl nods and scampers down the stairs to get the older man. You know that when Stick gets up here, he’ll handle this.

“I just need one thing before the boss gets up here,” the man you’re pointing a gun at speaks up.

Pom snarls, “And what could that be?”

“Underoos,” he says smugly.

Dennis screws up his face with confusion. “Underwear?”

The window smashes to pieces and something slams him against the wall, knocking his head against the wall so bad it leaves a smear of red as he slides down it before the person that’d slammed him webs him against the wall. Pom lets out a yell of anger and, by mutual unspoken agreement between you and her, trains her gun on the red and blue blur and starts to fire.

Tony Stark expands his Iron Man suit and the bullets you let loose a second too late ping off and roll on the floor. Without hesitation, you leap for your bag and your trusty older hoverboard leaning against the wall. You realize why sending Juna was a mistake: Stark probably hadn’t wanted a kid to be caught in the crossfire of the fight. You’d had the same idea, but it’d worked out better for him than you. Come on, Stick, come on…

You snap your newer hoverboard out just in time for your father to send missiles at you. They wrap around it tightly. Those had been meant for you, to keep you from struggling. The very thought of being caught up in one of those makes the butterflies do cartwheels. You yell “Shock!” and the electricity must short out the clamps because they clatter to the ground.

Still hiding behind the bulletproof board, you step onto your older one and wait for your feet to be clamped. When they do, you shoot up into the air, chucking a mini-bomb at your father. You aim too high and crash into the ceiling. Once you have enough room between yourself and the ceiling, you take stock of the room. Your father is enveloped in a cloud of smoke, coughing and, you imagine, waving his hands about, and Pom has abandoned her gun in favor of hand-to-hand combat with the Spider. Despite him being enhanced, she’s holding her own—winning, even. She’s vicious, furious about her brother.

You zoom towards them, preparing to crash into Spider-boy as hard as you can, but Pom sees what you’re doing and yells, “He’s mine!”

You veer sharply and crouch down by Dennis’ limp body. He’s pale but breathing, albeit shallowly. If he’d been killed, just after getting engaged, you might have shot Spider-boy, Pom or no Pom. You try to pry the webs off the wall but they’re strong, stronger than you’ve ever seen before. You snap your new board onto your wrist so you can use both hands to try to get Dennis unstuck. Desperately, you shoot at the web, hoping for it to make a difference. The webs just accept the bullet, let it cushion itself inside.

With panic, you realize that the bullet isn’t coming back. You curse and take a brief look over your shoulder—Tony Stark is holding his shoulder but raising his hand to shoot something at Pom. His shoulder probably got burned from the explosion, but you don’t care. You chuck another mini-bomb at him and turn around to see the bullet practically vibrating as it struggles to get out of the webs.

With a heart-stopping wrench, it gets out of the webs and pries the webs off the wall. You grab Dennis quickly and shoot out the door. “Pom!” you scream, looking over your shoulder, and cruise straight into a solid chest.

The two of you both groan and you backpedal with your board quickly, letting your mask contract. “Stick,” you pant, struggling to hold onto Dennis’ limp body. “Stark—he just—and Spider—”

Stick grabs hold of you quickly. You drop Dennis and he hits the floor with a thud. You wince, both from that and from Stick’s harsh grip on your arm. His fingers dig into your flesh, sure to leave bruises. “Stick,” you gasp, confused. “What are you—”

An evil sound, metal cocking, cuts you off, and a ring of cold steel presses against your forehead. “Tony Stark!” Stick roars, and everyone freezes except for Pom. She flips Spider-boy over her shoulder and kneels on his chest, one arm pressed against his throat. The bridge of her nose is cut and she’s got one black eye that’s swelling, but it still manages to widen when she looks at you and her father.

Stark slowly raises his arms. “Gates.” His voice is a warning, like he’s got the upper hand instead of Stick. Stick always wins.

“You broke our agreement.”

“You broke it first.”

“Stick,” you whisper, trying to swallow against the arm around your throat. It’s slowly cutting off your air. “I can’t breathe.” He loosens up the slightest bit, and the rush of oxygen to your brain lets you fully comprehend what’s pressed against your forehead. “What are you doing?”

“Y/N,” Tony Stark says calmly. Of course he wouldn’t even be worried about you. You’re just one of his many bastards.

“Get out of here,” you spit. “What, do you come and visit all of your bastards? Better hurry on; you won’t be able to fit twelve other appointments into this afternoon if you wait much longer.”

“Wait,” Spider-boy says suddenly, his voice very young and similar to another voice you can’t quite place. “Y/N—you’re Boardie?”

“I’ve been cruising around on a hoverboard,” you snap. “What the hell do you think? Who the hell are you?”

Spider-boy keeps silent.

“I have a lot to explain,” Stark says slowly. “But I promise you, Y/N, I am not your enemy.”

“Like hell you aren’t!” You struggle against Stick’s arms, trying to get to your father and make him hurt, make him feel one ounce of the pain you’ve been carrying your whole life, but Stick’s not giving. The coldness of the gun is making you shiver. “You abandoned me and my mom—you abandoned all of them! All of us! I spent my whole life knowing my own father didn’t want anything to do with me!”

One of the curtains to the smashed window is smoldering.

“Is that what he told you?” Tony Stark glares at Stick, his gaze filled with so much venom you nearly look away.

“That’s what my mother told me!” you snarl, trying to lunge for him but Stick’s arms hold you back.

Stark sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Well, she lied.”

You still, staring at him, before shaking your head and sneering at him. “Yeah, right, Stark. Nice try, but I’m not that stupid.”

“No!” Spider-boy protests. “It’s true!”

“Shut up or you’ll get a bullet in your chest,” Pom snarls. “You might just get one anyway, for my brother.”

“I had full custody of you until you were two,” Stark starts, probably about to say a well-rehearsed lie. “We were out in the park when a nearby building exploded. I left you with the drivers, thinking you’d be there when I got back. When I did get back, they all had bullets in their heads and you weren’t there.”

“One more word,” Stick says softly, “and there’s a bullet in her head.”

You suck in a shocked breath. “Stick?”

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I really don’t want to do this, but I have no choice,” he says loftily. “You were a great asset to the team while we had you. Money every month.”

You stare at your father, struggling to put together what, exactly, is happening.

Fact: Stick has a gun at your head

Fact: Stick gave you a home when you were younger

Fact: Your mother doesn’t have any baby pictures of you

Fact: Stick’s saying he used you for, what? Ransom?

Your eyes seek out Pom. She’s staring at the exchange with a slightly open mouth. Your eyes plead with her to do anything, say anything. She stares at you for a long second before mouthing, Mask.

What? You mouth back.

She touches the back of her neck with her hand and Spider-boy bucks her off. She goes sprawling at Tony Stark’s feet. To your surprise, he only looks at her.

“What, you’re not going to hold a gun to her head too?” you taunt, scratching at Stick’s arms with your hands. “Stick—let me go—”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Stark says softly.

“Do it!” Stick hisses. “Make it even! See, Y/N, look at what he’s doing.” The curtain is crackling softly now.

“You’re doing it too!” you snap, moving your hand to the side of your head and trying to pull his arm down. Spider-boy is crouching on the ground, looking between Stick and Stark quickly. You nearly feel bad for him; he’s probably not sure what to do since he takes all his orders from your father. He’s probably scared of him, jumps to do what he wants exactly when he wants it.

“You already knew I was a monster,” Stick says softly. You can feel his chin moving against your hair and you have the sudden urge to gag. You don’t want to be touched anymore. “Sorry, Y/N. You weren’t a good enough soldier. If you were, you’d let me do this.” Pom sucks in a ragged breath at Tony Stark’s feet, her wide eyes flicking between you and her father. Your eyes seek hers out, begging for forgiveness, before moving.

With a strength you didn’t know you had, you press for your mask and swing your legs up, attempting to bash Stick’s head in with your board. It follows easily, and Stick falls back. You hope he’s knocked out, even though you’d be horrified at hurting him. The mask pulls at your hair but you don’t even care. You throw mini-bomb after mini-bomb at him, not even sure what you’re doing anymore—do you idolize him? Do you hate him? Are you trying to kill him? You don’t realize you’re crying until one bomb goes wide. You retract your mask, trying to see if he’s all right.

“Stop!” Spider-boy shouts repeatedly at you. “You’re going to—”

KA-BOOM.

The room is immediately engulfed in flames. You stumble back from the wall of heat, your eyes streaming as you cough repeatedly.

“Dennis!” Pom screams by your side.

Your eyes widen as you realize you’d just sentenced your friend to nearly certain death. You’d just attacked Pom’s dad, and now her brother?

Without thinking about it, you cruise over the flames as fast as you can. The fire is in patches now, spreading towards something—your stomach drops when you realize it’s the cat-carrier. The day was not supposed to end like this. You swoop lower, ignoring the bellows on the other side of the flame-wall, ignoring how your body shrieks in agony, and scoop up the carrier just as soon as the fire reaches where it’d been sitting. Dennis’ body is in the hallway, Stick nowhere to be found, and you have to grab him before the flames spread more.

You hiss when you grab him and try to swoop up. He’s too heavy and your hands are too sweaty—he’s slipping. You hook your arms under his armpits and start to half-fly, half-drag him down the hallway. Your board’s scraping against the ground, and so are his boots, and the fire’s spreading faster than you’re traveling. Crookshanks is yowling repeatedly. You have no choice but to unlock the carrier and let him sprint out of the building. One less thing to carry.

“Come on!” you scream through gritted teeth, digging your heels into the board as much as you can. The fire’s nearly at you both now, and then the board detaches. You sob, then, as the white-hot floorboards start to melt your bathing suit. Your skin is on fire, it’s flaming, it hurts so bad even though the fire isn’t even touching you yet. You have to make a choice, and it shouldn’t even be a struggle, between Dennis and your board, only the board is the only thing you have from New York, as your room is surely ashes by now. You can’t carry both things at once.

Then you remember your new board is on your wrist. It may not be your old board, but it’s a board. Saying a silent ‘sorry’ to the board, you scramble to your feet, dragging Dennis down the stairs as fast as you can. You can hardly breathe through the smoke in the air, and the floor burns through the one flip-flop you still have on.

“Oh my God,” you pant, suddenly terribly aware of one fact: “I’m going to die.”

Dennis groans in response and you keep going on, despite the fact that your head’s going all fuzzy from lack of air. You’re on the second floor now, gulping for air desperately.

“What the fuck!” Dennis suddenly screams.

“Fire!” you yell back. “Can you walk?”

He nods, though he’s still pale, and you follow after his sprint slowly, stumbling and coughing. When his form is swallowed by the thick smoke, you fall to your knees, ignoring the way your skin is waxing from the heat, and roll onto your back. You got Dennis out. Pom still has her family.

The floorboards are shaking now, probably from burning objects falling onto them, and you close your eyes. You can’t breathe fully.

Then someone is manhandling you, picking you up like a rag doll. You try to force your eyes open, but they stay half-lidded. It makes no difference; the smoke is too thick to see anything. Then inspiration strikes you. You tap the button on your neck.

Instantly you take deep breaths of clean air, letting your brain receive oxygen, before letting whoever’s carrying you put you on your feet. You stumble with them, ignoring the nerve endings in your feet screaming in agony.

“One more floor,” the person says repeatedly to you. You’re probably imagining things, but it almost sounds like Peter is the one saying those things to you. “Don’t worry; your dad’s going to be able to help you.”

After a half-century of stumbling, your senses are overwhelmed with screams and bright light. You sag against whoever saved you, letting them half-drag you away from the building, wondering idly why they’re clutching your hand. Someone wraps you up in a cloth and puts you on a stretcher. The person’s hand is ripped out of yours and you try to protest but you can’t form the words.

Then something is placed over your mouth and you can breathe fully again. Your eyes fly open and there are five figures sitting around you. Someone cautiously takes your hand and you try to squeeze.

“Dennis,” you croak.

“I’m here, Y/N,” he says calmly. “I’m fine, and so are you.”

“Crook—” you start coughing and can’t stop.

The smallest figure sets the small cat on your stretcher. “Thank you, Y/N,” she says. You moan when the cat sits on top of you.

“Take that off her,” the largest figure orders.

“Stark?” you slur, looking at him. “Pom?”

The people you’d called for nod. You turn your head, ignoring an EMT who warns you not to, to look at the person who’s holding your hand. Spider-boy is sitting there with his mask off, curls askew and face smudged with soot.

“Peter?” you gasp. “You’re—”

You pass out.